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"content": "\u003cp>As the coronavirus pandemic ravaged communities and shuttered schools, many educators and parents worried about kindergarteners who were learning online. That concern now appears well-founded as we’re starting to see evidence that remote school and socially distanced instruction were profoundly detrimental to their reading development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Children in kindergarten when the pandemic broke out in the spring of 2020 are now roughly eight years old and in third grade this 2022-23 school year. A new report by the nonprofit educational assessment maker NWEA documents that \u003ca href=\"https://www.nwea.org/uploads/2022/12/CSSP-Brief_Progress-toward-pandemic-recovery_DEC22_Final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">third graders are currently suffering the largest pandemic-related learning losses in reading\u003c/a>, compared to older students in grades four to eight, and not readily recovering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Learning to read well in elementary school matters. After children learn to read, they read to learn. Poor reading ability in third grade can hobble their future academic achievement. It also matters to society as a whole. Students who fall behind at school are more likely to be arrested, incarcerated and become teen mothers. A separate December 2022 analysis calculated that if recent academic losses from the pandemic were to become permanent, it would add up to \u003ca href=\"https://www.nber.org/papers/w30701#fromrss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">$900 billion in lower lifetime earnings\u003c/a> for the 48 million students in public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why NWEA’s findings for third graders are alarming. The results emerged from an analysis of fall 2022 test scores of seven million elementary and middle school children across the nation, in which the reading abilities of third graders remained far behind what children used to be able to do in third grade before the pandemic. The differences between pre- and post-pandemic reading levels are smaller in older grades. While it’s good news that third graders are learning at a typical pace again and no longer falling further behind, they are also not gaining much extra ground. Their learning recovery is the smallest among students in grades three through eight. (See the purple reading graphic below.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Third graders in 2022 are the furthest behind in reading, as depicted by the bar on the far left. So far they’ve recovered only 10 percent of their pandemic learning losses, which were at their greatest in the spring of 2021. Older grades are making better progress in catching up.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_60591\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 624px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-60591 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/12/readingchart1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"624\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/12/readingchart1.png 624w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/12/readingchart1-160x103.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The current achievement gaps are the difference between the pre-COVID and COVID assessment scores in fall 2022. The widest achievement gaps were generally recorded in the spring of 2021. The percentages are the change in these gaps and reflect how much students have rebounded. (Source: NWEA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Karyn Lewis, a researcher at NWEA who led this analysis of test scores, said that current third graders are “a group that we really need to pay a lot of attention to” because the pandemic disrupted their kindergarten and first grade years when they were supposed to learn foundational reading skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Slightly older students in fifth, sixth and seventh grades, who were in second grade and above when the pandemic hit, are making much better progress in reading. If their current pace of learning continues, they’ll be on track to recover in two or three years, Lewis calculated. By contrast, it’s unclear when, if ever, current third graders will even catch up to pre-pandemic norms in reading. Lewis said there is a “long road to go” and that she estimates it will be “five plus years” for these third graders to catch up. That would be after eighth grade for this class of children. (See recovery graphic below.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Estimated years to reach recovery by subject and grade\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_60592\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 624px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-60592\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/12/readingchart2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"624\" height=\"316\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/12/readingchart2.png 624w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/12/readingchart2-160x81.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">These estimates were calculated by dividing the fall 2022 achievement gap by the cumulative rate of change between a cohort’s widest gap and the fall 2022 gap. Any estimate over 5 years as 5+. The vertical red line represents the deadline for committing federal ESSER funds (September 2024). Grade refers to the grade students are in during the 2022–23 school year.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s worth noting that \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-why-reading-comprehension-is-deteriorating/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pre-pandemic reading levels\u003c/a> weren’t spectacular and had been deteriorating; most children were not proficient in reading for their grade level, as measured by a national yardstick. So, it’s an estimated “long road” to return to a rather low level of achievement that was already a subject of consternation and hand-wringing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The NWEA research brief, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nwea.org/uploads/2022/12/CSSP-Brief_Progress-toward-pandemic-recovery_DEC22_Final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Progress towards pandemic recovery: Continued signs of rebounding achievement at the start of the 2022-23 school year\u003c/a>, was released on Dec. 6, 2022. It analyzes scores on its Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments that are purchased by more than 22,000 schools to measure student progress in both reading and math twice a year, in the fall and the spring. These are in addition to mandatory state assessments taken by students each spring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This latest NWEA report describes how student achievement deteriorated in 2020 and hit a bottom in the spring of 2021, after which student learning stabilized – a sign that students were once again learning at a typical pace as schools reopened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the report delves into both math and reading, I chose to focus on reading, a subject in which students didn’t fall as far behind during the pandemic, but are now making weaker catch-up progress. Interestingly, the report was able to detect that reading recovery among older students in grades four through seven isn’t happening at school. They’re learning at a typical pre-pandemic pace during the school year but avoiding some of the usual deterioration of reading skills during the summer. Typically, students forget a lot over the summer, a phenomenon known as “summer slide” or “summer learning loss.” It is unclear from this report why students retained more than usual during the summer of 2022 and returned to school in the fall with better-than-expected reading levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was more concerned about the alarm bells for third graders and why they’re struggling so much more than older students in reading. Timothy Shanahan, a literacy expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that younger elementary school kids rely on classroom instruction in school to learn to read. In older grades, much of the learning that accrues in reading is due to the students’ own reading and writing activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those [early] grades are particularly sensitive to educational disruptions,” Shanahan explained by email. “A fourth grader may have read for some number of minutes per day during those missed school days, while a kindergartner or first grader may not have been able to do that at all (since they wouldn’t know how yet).”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The early elementary years are critical because that’s when most children learn how to read words, what educators call “decoding.” Teachers in older grades don’t necessarily have the specialized training to backfill what students missed. A second grade teacher, for example, would likely not know much about teaching students how to identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words, an important step in learning to read called “\u003ca href=\"http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/pa/pa_what.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">phonemic awareness\u003c/a>,” because it’s a skill that is the province of kindergarten and first grade teachers, Shanahan explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t hear of lots of schools that were making explicit efforts to deal with that problem though certainly some individual teachers or schools might have,” said Shanahan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Callie Lowenstein, a second grade teacher at a bilingual elementary school in Washington, D.C., said that teachers feel “pressure” to stay on track with grade level lessons that don’t “accommodate or plan for the kinds of gaps we’re seeing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many curricula include an extremely cursory review of previous skills — so students who didn’t master earlier grades’ content are just left in the dust,” Lowenstein said. For example, the second grade reading lessons used by her school review the entire alphabet in one day and move quickly on. Many students need more practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Catlin Goodrow is a reading specialist who works with third, fourth and fifth grade students who need extra help at a charter school in Spokane, Washington. She said she is working daily with a small number of third graders on basic first grade phonics. In some cases their parents kept them out of school for a full two years. But most students aren’t this far behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More common are random gaps because children didn’t receive enough reinforcement or weren’t taught topics during quarantines. One child might not understand how a silent “e” at the end of a word affects pronunciation. Another child might not understand how to sound out words with “ough” in them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not as simple as being a year behind,” Goodrow said. “That would maybe be easier. It’s that they each have these really specific things that they didn’t pick up on. They each missed crucial bits and pieces.” Discovering them and filling them in for each child isn’t easy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Goodrow is hearing from third grade teachers that even children who can read words are having a much harder time paying attention to what they are reading than in previous years. Third graders are having greater trouble absorbing the meaning, identifying the main character or explaining what the story is about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The comprehension piece can be something they’re having challenges with,” said Goodrow. “I often think about, ‘Did they get those experiences where they were having their teacher read aloud to them and think aloud, and they’re on the carpet nearby?’ A lot of times, even when they were back at school full time, they were distanced. So they might not have had some of those early literacy experiences that built their ability to focus on the text that they’re reading.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because third grade is so critical, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/a-look-at-third-grade-reading-retention-policies.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">16 states plus the District of Columbia\u003c/a> require children to repeat the year if they cannot read at a basic level. Based on this NWEA test score report, states could be facing an avalanche of held-back children if those retention rules are enforced later this school year. That’s something I’ll be watching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>*Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Callie Lowenstein as a New York City teacher. She now teaches in Washington D.C. In addition, Lowenstein does not follow the curriculum used in her school and gives her students more review when needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-third-graders-struggling-the-most-to-recover-in-reading-after-the-pandemic/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>third grade reading\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>The Hechinger Report\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=66c306eebb323868c3ce353c1&id=d3ee4c3e04\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As the coronavirus pandemic ravaged communities and shuttered schools, many educators and parents worried about kindergarteners who were learning online. That concern now appears well-founded as we’re starting to see evidence that remote school and socially distanced instruction were profoundly detrimental to their reading development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Children in kindergarten when the pandemic broke out in the spring of 2020 are now roughly eight years old and in third grade this 2022-23 school year. A new report by the nonprofit educational assessment maker NWEA documents that \u003ca href=\"https://www.nwea.org/uploads/2022/12/CSSP-Brief_Progress-toward-pandemic-recovery_DEC22_Final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">third graders are currently suffering the largest pandemic-related learning losses in reading\u003c/a>, compared to older students in grades four to eight, and not readily recovering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Learning to read well in elementary school matters. After children learn to read, they read to learn. Poor reading ability in third grade can hobble their future academic achievement. It also matters to society as a whole. Students who fall behind at school are more likely to be arrested, incarcerated and become teen mothers. A separate December 2022 analysis calculated that if recent academic losses from the pandemic were to become permanent, it would add up to \u003ca href=\"https://www.nber.org/papers/w30701#fromrss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">$900 billion in lower lifetime earnings\u003c/a> for the 48 million students in public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why NWEA’s findings for third graders are alarming. The results emerged from an analysis of fall 2022 test scores of seven million elementary and middle school children across the nation, in which the reading abilities of third graders remained far behind what children used to be able to do in third grade before the pandemic. The differences between pre- and post-pandemic reading levels are smaller in older grades. While it’s good news that third graders are learning at a typical pace again and no longer falling further behind, they are also not gaining much extra ground. Their learning recovery is the smallest among students in grades three through eight. (See the purple reading graphic below.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Third graders in 2022 are the furthest behind in reading, as depicted by the bar on the far left. So far they’ve recovered only 10 percent of their pandemic learning losses, which were at their greatest in the spring of 2021. Older grades are making better progress in catching up.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_60591\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 624px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-60591 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/12/readingchart1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"624\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/12/readingchart1.png 624w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/12/readingchart1-160x103.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The current achievement gaps are the difference between the pre-COVID and COVID assessment scores in fall 2022. The widest achievement gaps were generally recorded in the spring of 2021. The percentages are the change in these gaps and reflect how much students have rebounded. (Source: NWEA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Karyn Lewis, a researcher at NWEA who led this analysis of test scores, said that current third graders are “a group that we really need to pay a lot of attention to” because the pandemic disrupted their kindergarten and first grade years when they were supposed to learn foundational reading skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Slightly older students in fifth, sixth and seventh grades, who were in second grade and above when the pandemic hit, are making much better progress in reading. If their current pace of learning continues, they’ll be on track to recover in two or three years, Lewis calculated. By contrast, it’s unclear when, if ever, current third graders will even catch up to pre-pandemic norms in reading. Lewis said there is a “long road to go” and that she estimates it will be “five plus years” for these third graders to catch up. That would be after eighth grade for this class of children. (See recovery graphic below.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Estimated years to reach recovery by subject and grade\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_60592\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 624px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-60592\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/12/readingchart2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"624\" height=\"316\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/12/readingchart2.png 624w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/12/readingchart2-160x81.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">These estimates were calculated by dividing the fall 2022 achievement gap by the cumulative rate of change between a cohort’s widest gap and the fall 2022 gap. Any estimate over 5 years as 5+. The vertical red line represents the deadline for committing federal ESSER funds (September 2024). Grade refers to the grade students are in during the 2022–23 school year.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s worth noting that \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-why-reading-comprehension-is-deteriorating/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pre-pandemic reading levels\u003c/a> weren’t spectacular and had been deteriorating; most children were not proficient in reading for their grade level, as measured by a national yardstick. So, it’s an estimated “long road” to return to a rather low level of achievement that was already a subject of consternation and hand-wringing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The NWEA research brief, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nwea.org/uploads/2022/12/CSSP-Brief_Progress-toward-pandemic-recovery_DEC22_Final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Progress towards pandemic recovery: Continued signs of rebounding achievement at the start of the 2022-23 school year\u003c/a>, was released on Dec. 6, 2022. It analyzes scores on its Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments that are purchased by more than 22,000 schools to measure student progress in both reading and math twice a year, in the fall and the spring. These are in addition to mandatory state assessments taken by students each spring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This latest NWEA report describes how student achievement deteriorated in 2020 and hit a bottom in the spring of 2021, after which student learning stabilized – a sign that students were once again learning at a typical pace as schools reopened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the report delves into both math and reading, I chose to focus on reading, a subject in which students didn’t fall as far behind during the pandemic, but are now making weaker catch-up progress. Interestingly, the report was able to detect that reading recovery among older students in grades four through seven isn’t happening at school. They’re learning at a typical pre-pandemic pace during the school year but avoiding some of the usual deterioration of reading skills during the summer. Typically, students forget a lot over the summer, a phenomenon known as “summer slide” or “summer learning loss.” It is unclear from this report why students retained more than usual during the summer of 2022 and returned to school in the fall with better-than-expected reading levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was more concerned about the alarm bells for third graders and why they’re struggling so much more than older students in reading. Timothy Shanahan, a literacy expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that younger elementary school kids rely on classroom instruction in school to learn to read. In older grades, much of the learning that accrues in reading is due to the students’ own reading and writing activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those [early] grades are particularly sensitive to educational disruptions,” Shanahan explained by email. “A fourth grader may have read for some number of minutes per day during those missed school days, while a kindergartner or first grader may not have been able to do that at all (since they wouldn’t know how yet).”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The early elementary years are critical because that’s when most children learn how to read words, what educators call “decoding.” Teachers in older grades don’t necessarily have the specialized training to backfill what students missed. A second grade teacher, for example, would likely not know much about teaching students how to identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words, an important step in learning to read called “\u003ca href=\"http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/pa/pa_what.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">phonemic awareness\u003c/a>,” because it’s a skill that is the province of kindergarten and first grade teachers, Shanahan explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t hear of lots of schools that were making explicit efforts to deal with that problem though certainly some individual teachers or schools might have,” said Shanahan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Callie Lowenstein, a second grade teacher at a bilingual elementary school in Washington, D.C., said that teachers feel “pressure” to stay on track with grade level lessons that don’t “accommodate or plan for the kinds of gaps we’re seeing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many curricula include an extremely cursory review of previous skills — so students who didn’t master earlier grades’ content are just left in the dust,” Lowenstein said. For example, the second grade reading lessons used by her school review the entire alphabet in one day and move quickly on. Many students need more practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Catlin Goodrow is a reading specialist who works with third, fourth and fifth grade students who need extra help at a charter school in Spokane, Washington. She said she is working daily with a small number of third graders on basic first grade phonics. In some cases their parents kept them out of school for a full two years. But most students aren’t this far behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More common are random gaps because children didn’t receive enough reinforcement or weren’t taught topics during quarantines. One child might not understand how a silent “e” at the end of a word affects pronunciation. Another child might not understand how to sound out words with “ough” in them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not as simple as being a year behind,” Goodrow said. “That would maybe be easier. It’s that they each have these really specific things that they didn’t pick up on. They each missed crucial bits and pieces.” Discovering them and filling them in for each child isn’t easy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Goodrow is hearing from third grade teachers that even children who can read words are having a much harder time paying attention to what they are reading than in previous years. Third graders are having greater trouble absorbing the meaning, identifying the main character or explaining what the story is about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The comprehension piece can be something they’re having challenges with,” said Goodrow. “I often think about, ‘Did they get those experiences where they were having their teacher read aloud to them and think aloud, and they’re on the carpet nearby?’ A lot of times, even when they were back at school full time, they were distanced. So they might not have had some of those early literacy experiences that built their ability to focus on the text that they’re reading.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because third grade is so critical, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/a-look-at-third-grade-reading-retention-policies.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">16 states plus the District of Columbia\u003c/a> require children to repeat the year if they cannot read at a basic level. Based on this NWEA test score report, states could be facing an avalanche of held-back children if those retention rules are enforced later this school year. That’s something I’ll be watching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>*Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Callie Lowenstein as a New York City teacher. She now teaches in Washington D.C. In addition, Lowenstein does not follow the curriculum used in her school and gives her students more review when needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-third-graders-struggling-the-most-to-recover-in-reading-after-the-pandemic/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>third grade reading\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>The Hechinger Report\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=66c306eebb323868c3ce353c1&id=d3ee4c3e04\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>School started on an ominous note this year. On Sept.1, the U.S. Department of Education released disastrous test results. Based on a sample of more than 7,000 9-year-olds around the country, two decades of academic progress in reading and math were erased from 2020 to 2022. But the scores also raised many questions. I will try to answer six of them here. (Thank you to everyone on Twitter who challenged me to explain numbers that seem to be nonsensical and contradictory.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q: How can 9-year-olds lose 20 years of academic progress? They weren’t even born 20 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A: Today’s 9-year-olds today are posting the same test scores in reading and math as an earlier generation of 9-year-olds did back in the early 2000s. In other words, children today are reading and adding about as well as children the same age did 20 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every few years, the Department of Education administers a test called Long-Term Trend NAEP or National Assessment of Educational Progress to a group of students selected to reflect the diversity of the U.S. student population. Before the pandemic, the reading and math abilities of 9-year-olds had been improving. Scores rose strongly in the 2000s* and then flatlined, holding steady in the 2010s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This graph from the statistical unit of the Education Department shows the history of the Long-Term Trend NAEP with the sudden plummet in test scores since the start of the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-59858\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"610\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022.png 977w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-800x499.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-160x100.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-768x480.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q: Is that really so tragic?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A: One can reasonably argue that it’s not so bad to be back where we were in 2000. Many children born 30 years ago, who would have been about 9 years old then, are educated adults and leading good lives today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it is troubling that the lowest achieving students in our schools lost the most ground between 2020 and 2022. Students in the bottom 10 percent in achievement lost four to five times more than students in the top 10 percent. In math, for example, that’s a drop of 12 points versus a three-point drop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If these children don’t catch up, they will be at a far greater risk of not learning to read well enough to function in our economy or of dropping out of high school because they cannot pass minimum math requirements. Based on another set of plummeting test scores during the pandemic, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimated that the current generation of less-educated students could reduce the size of the U.S. economy by \u003ca href=\"https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/covid-19-and-education-the-lingering-effects-of-unfinished-learning\">$128 billion to $188 billion a year\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q: How can student achievement around the country be hit so hard if we reported in July 2022 that the pace of learning was \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-pace-of-learning-back-to-normal-during-the-2021-22-pandemic-school-year-but-student-achievement-lags-far-behind-data-shows/\">back to normal\u003c/a>? Was that earlier report wrong?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A: Both reports are \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MeganKuhfeld/status/1565812327743881216?s=20&t=RvJ0QRRZ4-1WLPi9AR1NEQ\">consistent\u003c/a> with each other and show nearly\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MeganKuhfeld/status/1565812337822801920?s=20&t=_xwxkoB_lMIc2E97k1Xf-Q\"> identical declines in student test scores\u003c/a>. The recent Department of Education report reflects just two snapshots of NAEP test scores: one taken in early 2020 before the pandemic and one in early 2022. Between these two time periods, the achievement of 9-year-olds plummeted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The assessment organization NWEA measures children two to three times during the year using a test called Measures of Academic Progress or MAP, which is taken by millions of elementary and middle school students around the country every year. MAP scores plummeted dramatically in 2020-21 and then started to rebound slightly for many but not all children in 2021-22. Students at each grade level remained far behind where they had been before the pandemic, but they weren’t deteriorating further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I liken it to the difference between a quarterly and an annual report in finance. A company may be making less revenue today than two years ago, but a quarterly report will show more detailed ups and downs. NWEA’s details show that most of the academic decline occurred in 2020 and 2021, but not so much in 2022. The Department of Education’s NAEP report cannot pinpoint the exact timing of the slide between 2000 and 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q: So is there learning loss?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A: Students haven’t regressed. It’s not that individual children used to know how to read and then stopped being able to read. The NAEP test implies and the MAP test directly documents that children continued to get better in reading and math during the pandemic. But students missed hours of instruction for many reasons: family tragedies, closed schools, teachers out with COVID, inefficient remote instruction. So students learned less than usual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My best analogy, which I’ve used before, is a cross-country road trip. Imagine that students were traveling at 55 miles an hour, ran out of gas and started walking instead. According to the NWEA report, now they’re back in their cars and humming along again at 55 miles an hour. Some are traveling at 60 miles an hour, catching up slightly, but they’re still far away from the destination that they would have reached if they hadn’t run out of gas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s this distance from the destination that educators are describing when they talk about learning loss. Some people like to call this problem “missed learning” or “lost learning.” Whatever you want to call it, it means that today’s 9-year-olds – or third and fourth graders – cannot read and multiply as well as 9-year-olds did 10 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q: How could scores decline nationally, but not in cities or rural areas?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A: In math, it’s a simpler story. Everyone deteriorated. High achievers and low achievers, along with Black, white and Hispanic students. City, suburban and country students all posted lower math scores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in reading, test scores in urban school districts didn’t decline between 2020 and 2022. They were also unchanged in rural districts and throughout the West.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-59857\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-MAP.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-MAP.png 977w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-MAP-800x392.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-MAP-160x78.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-MAP-768x377.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I talked with Grady Wilburn, a statistician in the assessment division at the National Center for Education Statistics, who drilled down into the data with me. There were not substantial changes in the racial or income composition of these regions between 2020 and 2022 that could explain why reading achievement held stable. Hypothetically, if cities had gentrified during the pandemic, higher income students would have had higher test scores and could have masked the score declines. But that did not happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also looked at different combinations of race, income and geography. Nationally, Black students scored six points lower in reading, but in the cities, Black 9-year olds scored the same in 2022 as they did before the pandemic hit in 2020. Also unchanged were the scores of white city students, Hispanic city students and city students who are poor enough to qualify for free lunch. In rural areas, both Black and Hispanic students held steady too, but white students in rural areas did deteriorate a bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were puzzled by these numbers too,” said Wilburn. “Our commissioner has been saying maybe that’s one place that researchers should dive into, to better understand what city and rural communities may have done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the scores of Black, white, Hispanic and free-lunch eligible students in the suburbs as well as small towns all declined sharply during the pandemic. This means that the national declines in test scores were primarily driven by suburban 9-year-olds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One possibility is that city and rural families read more at home. Perhaps brothers and sisters read to each other. Another possibility is that suburban schools deliver a vastly superior education to students that, in normal times, is very effective in teaching young elementary school children to read well. When school days were disrupted during the pandemic, student achievement suffered more. The more effective school is, the more students might suffer when they get less of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q: Can we tell from this NAEP report whether school closures and remote instruction are to blame?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A: No. But the fact that city schools, where students were most likely to have missed more in-person days, held steady in reading (see above) is a sign that remote learning wasn’t always so detrimental. Suburban and small town students, who tended to have more in-person days, fared worse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Accompanying the NAEP test was a student survey, which asked students if they learned remotely even once during the 2020-21 school year. But it didn’t ask 9-year-olds to count the number of remote days, so it’s impossible to say if more days of remote school led to worse outcomes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A separate analysis of NWEA’s MAP scores, circulated in May 2022, found that students who learned \u003ca href=\"https://www.nber.org/papers/w30010\">remotely lost far more ground\u003c/a>. It indicated that remote instruction was the primary driver of widening achievement gaps between rich and poor and between children of color and white students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A more detailed report from the Department of Education on student achievement during the pandemic is expected in October. It will list state achievement scores for fourth and eighth graders on another NAEP test. Hopefully, we can unravel more of these knots together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>*Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly described the history of test scores. Scores rose strongly in the 2000s, not the 2010s.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-six-puzzling-questions-from-the-disastrous-naep-results/\">\u003cem>NAEP\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> scores was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>The Hechinger Report\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=66c306eebb323868c3ce353c1&id=d3ee4c3e04\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>School started on an ominous note this year. On Sept.1, the U.S. Department of Education released disastrous test results. Based on a sample of more than 7,000 9-year-olds around the country, two decades of academic progress in reading and math were erased from 2020 to 2022. But the scores also raised many questions. I will try to answer six of them here. (Thank you to everyone on Twitter who challenged me to explain numbers that seem to be nonsensical and contradictory.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q: How can 9-year-olds lose 20 years of academic progress? They weren’t even born 20 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A: Today’s 9-year-olds today are posting the same test scores in reading and math as an earlier generation of 9-year-olds did back in the early 2000s. In other words, children today are reading and adding about as well as children the same age did 20 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every few years, the Department of Education administers a test called Long-Term Trend NAEP or National Assessment of Educational Progress to a group of students selected to reflect the diversity of the U.S. student population. Before the pandemic, the reading and math abilities of 9-year-olds had been improving. Scores rose strongly in the 2000s* and then flatlined, holding steady in the 2010s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This graph from the statistical unit of the Education Department shows the history of the Long-Term Trend NAEP with the sudden plummet in test scores since the start of the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-59858\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"610\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022.png 977w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-800x499.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-160x100.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-768x480.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q: Is that really so tragic?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A: One can reasonably argue that it’s not so bad to be back where we were in 2000. Many children born 30 years ago, who would have been about 9 years old then, are educated adults and leading good lives today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it is troubling that the lowest achieving students in our schools lost the most ground between 2020 and 2022. Students in the bottom 10 percent in achievement lost four to five times more than students in the top 10 percent. In math, for example, that’s a drop of 12 points versus a three-point drop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If these children don’t catch up, they will be at a far greater risk of not learning to read well enough to function in our economy or of dropping out of high school because they cannot pass minimum math requirements. Based on another set of plummeting test scores during the pandemic, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimated that the current generation of less-educated students could reduce the size of the U.S. economy by \u003ca href=\"https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/covid-19-and-education-the-lingering-effects-of-unfinished-learning\">$128 billion to $188 billion a year\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q: How can student achievement around the country be hit so hard if we reported in July 2022 that the pace of learning was \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-pace-of-learning-back-to-normal-during-the-2021-22-pandemic-school-year-but-student-achievement-lags-far-behind-data-shows/\">back to normal\u003c/a>? Was that earlier report wrong?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A: Both reports are \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MeganKuhfeld/status/1565812327743881216?s=20&t=RvJ0QRRZ4-1WLPi9AR1NEQ\">consistent\u003c/a> with each other and show nearly\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MeganKuhfeld/status/1565812337822801920?s=20&t=_xwxkoB_lMIc2E97k1Xf-Q\"> identical declines in student test scores\u003c/a>. The recent Department of Education report reflects just two snapshots of NAEP test scores: one taken in early 2020 before the pandemic and one in early 2022. Between these two time periods, the achievement of 9-year-olds plummeted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The assessment organization NWEA measures children two to three times during the year using a test called Measures of Academic Progress or MAP, which is taken by millions of elementary and middle school students around the country every year. MAP scores plummeted dramatically in 2020-21 and then started to rebound slightly for many but not all children in 2021-22. Students at each grade level remained far behind where they had been before the pandemic, but they weren’t deteriorating further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I liken it to the difference between a quarterly and an annual report in finance. A company may be making less revenue today than two years ago, but a quarterly report will show more detailed ups and downs. NWEA’s details show that most of the academic decline occurred in 2020 and 2021, but not so much in 2022. The Department of Education’s NAEP report cannot pinpoint the exact timing of the slide between 2000 and 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q: So is there learning loss?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A: Students haven’t regressed. It’s not that individual children used to know how to read and then stopped being able to read. The NAEP test implies and the MAP test directly documents that children continued to get better in reading and math during the pandemic. But students missed hours of instruction for many reasons: family tragedies, closed schools, teachers out with COVID, inefficient remote instruction. So students learned less than usual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My best analogy, which I’ve used before, is a cross-country road trip. Imagine that students were traveling at 55 miles an hour, ran out of gas and started walking instead. According to the NWEA report, now they’re back in their cars and humming along again at 55 miles an hour. Some are traveling at 60 miles an hour, catching up slightly, but they’re still far away from the destination that they would have reached if they hadn’t run out of gas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s this distance from the destination that educators are describing when they talk about learning loss. Some people like to call this problem “missed learning” or “lost learning.” Whatever you want to call it, it means that today’s 9-year-olds – or third and fourth graders – cannot read and multiply as well as 9-year-olds did 10 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q: How could scores decline nationally, but not in cities or rural areas?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A: In math, it’s a simpler story. Everyone deteriorated. High achievers and low achievers, along with Black, white and Hispanic students. City, suburban and country students all posted lower math scores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in reading, test scores in urban school districts didn’t decline between 2020 and 2022. They were also unchanged in rural districts and throughout the West.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-59857\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-MAP.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-MAP.png 977w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-MAP-800x392.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-MAP-160x78.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2022/09/NCES-Math-and-English-Scores-2022-MAP-768x377.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I talked with Grady Wilburn, a statistician in the assessment division at the National Center for Education Statistics, who drilled down into the data with me. There were not substantial changes in the racial or income composition of these regions between 2020 and 2022 that could explain why reading achievement held stable. Hypothetically, if cities had gentrified during the pandemic, higher income students would have had higher test scores and could have masked the score declines. But that did not happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also looked at different combinations of race, income and geography. Nationally, Black students scored six points lower in reading, but in the cities, Black 9-year olds scored the same in 2022 as they did before the pandemic hit in 2020. Also unchanged were the scores of white city students, Hispanic city students and city students who are poor enough to qualify for free lunch. In rural areas, both Black and Hispanic students held steady too, but white students in rural areas did deteriorate a bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were puzzled by these numbers too,” said Wilburn. “Our commissioner has been saying maybe that’s one place that researchers should dive into, to better understand what city and rural communities may have done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the scores of Black, white, Hispanic and free-lunch eligible students in the suburbs as well as small towns all declined sharply during the pandemic. This means that the national declines in test scores were primarily driven by suburban 9-year-olds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One possibility is that city and rural families read more at home. Perhaps brothers and sisters read to each other. Another possibility is that suburban schools deliver a vastly superior education to students that, in normal times, is very effective in teaching young elementary school children to read well. When school days were disrupted during the pandemic, student achievement suffered more. The more effective school is, the more students might suffer when they get less of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q: Can we tell from this NAEP report whether school closures and remote instruction are to blame?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A: No. But the fact that city schools, where students were most likely to have missed more in-person days, held steady in reading (see above) is a sign that remote learning wasn’t always so detrimental. Suburban and small town students, who tended to have more in-person days, fared worse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Accompanying the NAEP test was a student survey, which asked students if they learned remotely even once during the 2020-21 school year. But it didn’t ask 9-year-olds to count the number of remote days, so it’s impossible to say if more days of remote school led to worse outcomes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A separate analysis of NWEA’s MAP scores, circulated in May 2022, found that students who learned \u003ca href=\"https://www.nber.org/papers/w30010\">remotely lost far more ground\u003c/a>. It indicated that remote instruction was the primary driver of widening achievement gaps between rich and poor and between children of color and white students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A more detailed report from the Department of Education on student achievement during the pandemic is expected in October. It will list state achievement scores for fourth and eighth graders on another NAEP test. Hopefully, we can unravel more of these knots together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>*Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly described the history of test scores. Scores rose strongly in the 2000s, not the 2010s.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-six-puzzling-questions-from-the-disastrous-naep-results/\">\u003cem>NAEP\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> scores was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>The Hechinger Report\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=66c306eebb323868c3ce353c1&id=d3ee4c3e04\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Two years ago schools shut down around the world. These are the biggest impacts",
"title": "Two years ago schools shut down around the world. These are the biggest impacts",
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"content": "\u003cp>Two years ago this month, schools closed their doors in 185 countries. \u003ca href=\"https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse\">According to UNESCO\u003c/a>, roughly 9 out of 10 schoolchildren worldwide were out of school. It would soon be the biggest, longest interruption in schooling since formal education became the norm in wealthier countries in the late 19th century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/04/02/824964864/nine-out-of-10-of-the-world-s-children-are-out-of-school-what-now\"> time, I spoke with\u003c/a> several experts in the field of research known as \"education in emergencies.\" They gave their predictions for the long-term implications of school closures in the United States based on the research on previous school interruptions caused by war, refugee crises, natural disasters and previous epidemics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two years on, schools are open and masks are coming off in most places, restoring a feeling of normalcy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, how have these predictions played out? Let's take a look.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Prediction: Student learning will suffer. Vulnerable and marginalized students will be most affected.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Verdict: TRUE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the United States, \u003ca href=\"https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse#durationschoolclosures\">compared with wealthy countries\u003c/a> in Western Europe and East Asia, schools were typically closed longer. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/24/980592512/new-data-highlight-disparities-in-students-learning-in-person#:~:text=And%20the%20survey%20found%20large,27%25%20of%20White%20students%20were.\">majority\u003c/a> of Black, Hispanic and Asian students stayed remote through early 2021. In the fall of 2020, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/10/07/921287309/pandemic-seems-to-be-driving-school-enrollment-down-npr-investigation-shows\">enrollment dropped\u003c/a>, driven by families who sat out pre-K and kindergarten.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2022376118\">All \u003c/a>the \u003ca href=\"https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/covid-19-and-education-the-lingering-effects-of-unfinished-learning\">data\u003c/a> we have to date shows students falling behind where they would have been without the interruption. As predicted, these gaps are consistently bigger for low-income, Black and Latino children. This study from \u003ca href=\"https://www.nber.org/papers/w29497\">November\u003c/a> found these gaps were bigger at schools that had less in-person learning in the 2020-2021 school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the latest research focuses on students \u003ca href=\"https://amplify.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/mCLASS_MOY-Results_February-2022-Report.pdf\">learning to read\u003c/a>. One recent \u003ca href=\"https://pals.virginia.edu/public/pdfs/login/PALS_StateReport_Fall_2021.pdf\">study in Virginia\u003c/a> found early reading skills at a 20-year low this past fall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, schools were closed for a few months, and student learning recovered to its previous trajectory after two full school years – and then \u003ca href=\"https://crpe.org/what-post-katrina-new-orleans-can-teach-schools-about-addressing-covid-learning-losses/\">improved from there\u003c/a>. Post-COVID recovery \u003ca href=\"https://eab.com/insights/expert-insight/strategy/lessons-aftermath-hurricane-katrina-support-pandemic-recovery/\">could take even longer\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Prediction: A spike in the high school dropout rate and a fall in college enrollment. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Verdict: MOSTLY TRUE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the class of 2020, districts relaxed graduation requirements, and students graduated in similar or even improved numbers compared with previous years. For 2021, it was a different story. Data is incomplete, but \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/1/24/22895461/2021-graduation-rates-decrease-pandemic\">Chalkbeat reported\u003c/a> recently that high school graduation rates were trending down in most states for which they had data. And district superintendents have \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1062999168/school-enrollment-drops-for-second-straight-year\">told NPR\u003c/a> they are missing older students who have traded schooling for paid work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/01/13/1072529477/more-than-1-million-fewer-students-are-in-college-the-lowest-enrollment-numbers-\">Federal data,\u003c/a> meanwhile, show college enrollment is down more than 1 million students over the past two years. This is \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/12/27/1068298117/-17-trillion-thats-how-much-the-pandemic-could-take-away-from-todays-kids\">an international phenomenon\u003c/a> that could reduce earnings around the world by a total of $17 trillion if not addressed, the UN predicts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Prediction: Children are at risk for toxic stress when schools close.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Verdict: TRUE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools provide food, safety, relationships, stability and hope for most children around the world. Conversely, school closures tend to take place in the context of massive social upheaval. The pandemic was no exception. At least \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/10/07/1043881136/covid-deaths-leave-thousands-of-u-s-kids-grieving-parents-or-primary-caregivers#:~:text=Press-,COVID%20deaths%20leave%20thousands%20of%20U.S.%20kids%20grieving%20parents%20or,racial%20and%20ethnic%20minority%20groups.\">175,000 children\u003c/a> were bereaved or orphaned in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School and child-care closures drove mothers out of the workforce, increasing stress on them and creating economic uncertainty for children. Government assistance, such as the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/01/27/1075299510/the-expanded-child-tax-credit-briefly-slashed-child-poverty-heres-what-else-it-d\">expanded child tax credit\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/02/02/1077300038/some-families-are-being-forced-to-choose-between-remote-learning-and-school-meal\">school meals, \u003c/a>has been inconsistent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and the nation's pediatricians are calling youth mental health a\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/12/07/1062112212/the-u-s-surgeon-general-issues-a-stark-warning-about-the-state-of-youth-mental-h\"> \"crisis\"\u003c/a> and an\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/10/20/1047624943/pediatricians-call-mental-health-crisis-among-kids-a-national-emergency\"> \"emergency.\"\u003c/a> In October 2021, \u003ca href=\"https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/students-mental-health-ranks-top-concern-for-teachers-returning-to-the-classroom-but-teachers-note-connections-with-families-have-improved-during-pandemic-301395304.html\">teachers told pollsters \u003c/a>that children's mental health was their top concern. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/02/16/1081049158/consensus-grows-that-the-pandemic-has-taken-a-big-emotional-toll-on-young-people\">Eighty percent of parents\u003c/a> in a more recent poll are worried about their own kids' well-being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a bright spot, now that things are reopening, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1064975215/heres-what-schools-are-doing-to-try-to-address-students-social-emotional-needs\">97% of schools in a federal survey\u003c/a> say they are taking new steps to support student well-being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Prediction: School systems are sometimes entirely remade.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Verdict: Jury's still out. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crisis can bring reinvention. In New Orleans, after Katrina in 2005, public schools were entirely replaced with a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/08/15/431967706/new-orleans-schools-10-years-after-katrina-beacon-or-warning\">controversial \"portfolio district\"\u003c/a> of charter schools. School performance improved as measured by test scores, but by the time of the COVID shutdown, the city \u003ca href=\"https://thelensnola.org/2019/11/06/compare-2019-new-orleans-school-ratings/\">still ranked below\u003c/a> the state average . Puerto Rico, after Hurricane Maria in 2017, passed a law reorganizing the school system and creating charters and voucher programs. Serious \u003ca href=\"https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-announces-new-actions-improve-educational-outcomes-students-puerto-rico\">learning interruptions \u003c/a>and impacts have continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2022, in the United States, we're hearing a lot more about \u003ca href=\"https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/statement-us-secretary-education-miguel-cardona-one-year-anniversary-american-rescue-plan\">recovery\u003c/a> than reform. But an \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/12/13/1061787233/more-black-families-are-homeschooling-their-children-citing-the-pandemic-and-rac\">apparent spike in home-schooling \u003c/a>combined with a persistent \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1062999168/school-enrollment-drops-for-second-straight-year\">downturn in enrollment\u003c/a> in big-city school districts could indicate parents searching for alternatives – or creating them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Two+years+ago+schools+shut+down+around+the+world.+These+are+the+biggest+impacts&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Two years ago this month, schools closed their doors in 185 countries. \u003ca href=\"https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse\">According to UNESCO\u003c/a>, roughly 9 out of 10 schoolchildren worldwide were out of school. It would soon be the biggest, longest interruption in schooling since formal education became the norm in wealthier countries in the late 19th century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/04/02/824964864/nine-out-of-10-of-the-world-s-children-are-out-of-school-what-now\"> time, I spoke with\u003c/a> several experts in the field of research known as \"education in emergencies.\" They gave their predictions for the long-term implications of school closures in the United States based on the research on previous school interruptions caused by war, refugee crises, natural disasters and previous epidemics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two years on, schools are open and masks are coming off in most places, restoring a feeling of normalcy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, how have these predictions played out? Let's take a look.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Prediction: Student learning will suffer. Vulnerable and marginalized students will be most affected.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Verdict: TRUE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the United States, \u003ca href=\"https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse#durationschoolclosures\">compared with wealthy countries\u003c/a> in Western Europe and East Asia, schools were typically closed longer. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/24/980592512/new-data-highlight-disparities-in-students-learning-in-person#:~:text=And%20the%20survey%20found%20large,27%25%20of%20White%20students%20were.\">majority\u003c/a> of Black, Hispanic and Asian students stayed remote through early 2021. In the fall of 2020, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/10/07/921287309/pandemic-seems-to-be-driving-school-enrollment-down-npr-investigation-shows\">enrollment dropped\u003c/a>, driven by families who sat out pre-K and kindergarten.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2022376118\">All \u003c/a>the \u003ca href=\"https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/covid-19-and-education-the-lingering-effects-of-unfinished-learning\">data\u003c/a> we have to date shows students falling behind where they would have been without the interruption. As predicted, these gaps are consistently bigger for low-income, Black and Latino children. This study from \u003ca href=\"https://www.nber.org/papers/w29497\">November\u003c/a> found these gaps were bigger at schools that had less in-person learning in the 2020-2021 school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the latest research focuses on students \u003ca href=\"https://amplify.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/mCLASS_MOY-Results_February-2022-Report.pdf\">learning to read\u003c/a>. One recent \u003ca href=\"https://pals.virginia.edu/public/pdfs/login/PALS_StateReport_Fall_2021.pdf\">study in Virginia\u003c/a> found early reading skills at a 20-year low this past fall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, schools were closed for a few months, and student learning recovered to its previous trajectory after two full school years – and then \u003ca href=\"https://crpe.org/what-post-katrina-new-orleans-can-teach-schools-about-addressing-covid-learning-losses/\">improved from there\u003c/a>. Post-COVID recovery \u003ca href=\"https://eab.com/insights/expert-insight/strategy/lessons-aftermath-hurricane-katrina-support-pandemic-recovery/\">could take even longer\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Prediction: A spike in the high school dropout rate and a fall in college enrollment. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Verdict: MOSTLY TRUE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the class of 2020, districts relaxed graduation requirements, and students graduated in similar or even improved numbers compared with previous years. For 2021, it was a different story. Data is incomplete, but \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/1/24/22895461/2021-graduation-rates-decrease-pandemic\">Chalkbeat reported\u003c/a> recently that high school graduation rates were trending down in most states for which they had data. And district superintendents have \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1062999168/school-enrollment-drops-for-second-straight-year\">told NPR\u003c/a> they are missing older students who have traded schooling for paid work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/01/13/1072529477/more-than-1-million-fewer-students-are-in-college-the-lowest-enrollment-numbers-\">Federal data,\u003c/a> meanwhile, show college enrollment is down more than 1 million students over the past two years. This is \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/12/27/1068298117/-17-trillion-thats-how-much-the-pandemic-could-take-away-from-todays-kids\">an international phenomenon\u003c/a> that could reduce earnings around the world by a total of $17 trillion if not addressed, the UN predicts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Prediction: Children are at risk for toxic stress when schools close.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Verdict: TRUE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools provide food, safety, relationships, stability and hope for most children around the world. Conversely, school closures tend to take place in the context of massive social upheaval. The pandemic was no exception. At least \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/10/07/1043881136/covid-deaths-leave-thousands-of-u-s-kids-grieving-parents-or-primary-caregivers#:~:text=Press-,COVID%20deaths%20leave%20thousands%20of%20U.S.%20kids%20grieving%20parents%20or,racial%20and%20ethnic%20minority%20groups.\">175,000 children\u003c/a> were bereaved or orphaned in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School and child-care closures drove mothers out of the workforce, increasing stress on them and creating economic uncertainty for children. Government assistance, such as the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/01/27/1075299510/the-expanded-child-tax-credit-briefly-slashed-child-poverty-heres-what-else-it-d\">expanded child tax credit\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/02/02/1077300038/some-families-are-being-forced-to-choose-between-remote-learning-and-school-meal\">school meals, \u003c/a>has been inconsistent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and the nation's pediatricians are calling youth mental health a\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/12/07/1062112212/the-u-s-surgeon-general-issues-a-stark-warning-about-the-state-of-youth-mental-h\"> \"crisis\"\u003c/a> and an\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/10/20/1047624943/pediatricians-call-mental-health-crisis-among-kids-a-national-emergency\"> \"emergency.\"\u003c/a> In October 2021, \u003ca href=\"https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/students-mental-health-ranks-top-concern-for-teachers-returning-to-the-classroom-but-teachers-note-connections-with-families-have-improved-during-pandemic-301395304.html\">teachers told pollsters \u003c/a>that children's mental health was their top concern. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/02/16/1081049158/consensus-grows-that-the-pandemic-has-taken-a-big-emotional-toll-on-young-people\">Eighty percent of parents\u003c/a> in a more recent poll are worried about their own kids' well-being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a bright spot, now that things are reopening, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1064975215/heres-what-schools-are-doing-to-try-to-address-students-social-emotional-needs\">97% of schools in a federal survey\u003c/a> say they are taking new steps to support student well-being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Prediction: School systems are sometimes entirely remade.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Verdict: Jury's still out. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crisis can bring reinvention. In New Orleans, after Katrina in 2005, public schools were entirely replaced with a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/08/15/431967706/new-orleans-schools-10-years-after-katrina-beacon-or-warning\">controversial \"portfolio district\"\u003c/a> of charter schools. School performance improved as measured by test scores, but by the time of the COVID shutdown, the city \u003ca href=\"https://thelensnola.org/2019/11/06/compare-2019-new-orleans-school-ratings/\">still ranked below\u003c/a> the state average . Puerto Rico, after Hurricane Maria in 2017, passed a law reorganizing the school system and creating charters and voucher programs. Serious \u003ca href=\"https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-announces-new-actions-improve-educational-outcomes-students-puerto-rico\">learning interruptions \u003c/a>and impacts have continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2022, in the United States, we're hearing a lot more about \u003ca href=\"https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/statement-us-secretary-education-miguel-cardona-one-year-anniversary-american-rescue-plan\">recovery\u003c/a> than reform. But an \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/12/13/1061787233/more-black-families-are-homeschooling-their-children-citing-the-pandemic-and-rac\">apparent spike in home-schooling \u003c/a>combined with a persistent \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1062999168/school-enrollment-drops-for-second-straight-year\">downturn in enrollment\u003c/a> in big-city school districts could indicate parents searching for alternatives – or creating them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Two+years+ago+schools+shut+down+around+the+world.+These+are+the+biggest+impacts&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Joel Barron, a mother of two in Minnetonka, Minn., has a question for policymakers:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Will you look in my child's eyes when they do not have any food?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until recently, Barron's children, ages 10 and 12, qualified for free school meals. During the last school year, when they and millions of other kids were learning remotely, Barron received the value of the meals they missed on a debit card that she could use to buy groceries herself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The program, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/990860172/usda-moves-to-feed-millions-of-children-over-the-summer\">called P-EBT\u003c/a>, began with the pandemic in March 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It was a godsend,\" Barron says of the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). \"We were able to actually get through the whole month without trying to think about, 'Oh, we have to go to the food [pantry].' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That changed after Barron's school district reopened for in-person learning. Because a COVID-19 vaccine wasn't yet available for her 10-year-old son and her daughter struggles with asthma, Barron felt safer keeping them home again this school year and enrolling them in the district's online academy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is that, \u003ca href=\"https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/resource-files/Attachment-1-PEBT-QA-School-Year-2021-2022.pdf\">according to USDA guidance\u003c/a>, \"a virtual academy, whether administered by the State or the school district, is not eligible to participate in the [National School Lunch Program (NSLP)].\" Which means no P-EBT this year for families like Barron's.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The guidance excludes some students who are still learning remotely\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Most schools in the U.S. started the 2021-'22 school year in person, including Barron's district. But, she says, \"I decided what was best for my children was to have them attend the distance learning academy.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That academy is run by White Bear Lake Area Schools (WBLAS), and \u003ca href=\"https://www.isd624.org/academics/distance-learning-academy\">according to its website\u003c/a> is \"taught by WBLAS teachers, aligned with WBLAS curriculum and Minnesota state standards and designed to meet the same high levels of academic rigor present in traditional in-person school.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, Barron's kids still attend public school – just online. She was shocked when she realized, months into the school year, that decision meant they no longer qualified for P-EBT.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barron took her confusion and frustration to social media in January. Her story appeared \u003ca href=\"https://thecounter.org/p-ebt-families-children-virtual-learning-school-lunch-hunger/\">in The Counter\u003c/a>, a food journalism website, and she even \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/jojomagicc/status/1482063767202680844?s=20&t=lbjK6O2TOxuQALHmARGeFw\">challenged NPR on Twitter\u003c/a>: \"Will you write an article on P-ebt and how virtual student[s] are left out\"?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>USDA, meanwhile, says students cannot receive P-EBT benefits this year if they attend a program that has not traditionally offered school meals, like a virtual academy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Benefits are available to children who would have received free or reduced price meals at their schools... if not for their schools' closure or reduced attendance or hours in response to the COVID emergency,\" a USDA spokesperson tells NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\"I feel like I was punished for making the best choice for my child.\"\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://www.brookings.edu/research/an-update-on-the-effect-of-pandemic-ebt-on-measures-of-food-hardship/\">an analysis by the Brookings Institution,\u003c/a> P-EBT \"significantly reduced food hardship in the winter, spring, and summer of 2020-21.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anti-hunger advocates say it's important for policymakers to understand that some families still don't feel comfortable returning to brick-and-mortar schools, and the USDA shouldn't simply cut them off from money that helped put food on their tables last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We're trying to fit the current problem into rules that were designed pre-pandemic,\" says Rachel Cooper, a senior policy analyst with the nonprofit think tank Every Texan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, virtual academies are traditionally excluded from the school lunch program, Cooper says, but there's nothing traditional about this school year. Many vulnerable children depended on P-EBT last year and are now enrolled in virtual schools because of continued COVID concerns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many places, these academies are families' only remaining online option.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cooper says the USDA is forcing some families to choose between keeping children home, for fear of COVID, and sending them back to school so they can receive free breakfast and lunch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"That is a choice that we shouldn't be forcing families to make. It is a technicality that is playing out on the most vulnerable families,\" she explains. \"\u003cem>Kinship\u003c/em> families – kids being raised by grandparents who are at high risk themselves, and ... they're on fixed incomes. P-EBT and free school meals are critical for them. And so having it cut off really means there's nothing to put on the dinner table.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many parents and caregivers, including Barron, say they had no idea enrolling in a virtual academy would cut off access to P-EBT. Barron's district is still offering meals to go, but they must be picked up and Barron has no car.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I feel like I was punished for making the best choice for my child,\" Barron says. \"I never wanted to keep my children away from school.\" They loved school, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Not all students have been cut off from P-EBT\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>USDA's guidance does allow P-EBT for students who are learning virtually \u003cem>temporarily\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students who attend schools that participate in the school lunch program and \"that adopt a hybrid schedule or temporarily switch to virtual instruction in response to COVID are eligible for P-EBT benefits on those remote learning days,\" a USDA spokesperson tells NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to continue to provide P-EBT benefits, even in these limited situations, states must meet strict new USDA reporting requirements – and before they can access the funds, they have to submit plans outlining how they'll do that. Halfway through this school year, 29 states have submitted their plans. \u003ca href=\"https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/state-guidance-coronavirus-pandemic-ebt-pebt\">Just 12 have been approved\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"USDA is requiring that [schools] have a process to be able to track those individual kids [who are receiving P-EBT]. And that's not data that states and school districts ever really track,\" says Lisa Davis, senior vice president of Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry campaign. \"It's very, very onerous to determine if Susie's out because of COVID or for another reason ... so because of that, we know that some states have been hesitant to apply [for P-EBT].\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Nobody's ill-intentioned,\" Davis says, pointing out that USDA can no longer make broad assumptions about who qualifies for P-EBT as it did last year, when entire districts were remote. But asking schools to meet strict new rules and provide more detailed data, especially when staffing has been stretched thin by the surge in coronavirus cases, is unrealistic in many places, if not impossible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Davis warns of another crisis looming: States that don't submit a school-year P-EBT plan won't be able to offer the program to students \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/990860172/usda-moves-to-feed-millions-of-children-over-the-summer\">over the summer\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Some+families+are+being+forced+to+choose+between+remote+learning+and+school+meals&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Joel Barron, a mother of two in Minnetonka, Minn., has a question for policymakers:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Will you look in my child's eyes when they do not have any food?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until recently, Barron's children, ages 10 and 12, qualified for free school meals. During the last school year, when they and millions of other kids were learning remotely, Barron received the value of the meals they missed on a debit card that she could use to buy groceries herself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The program, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/990860172/usda-moves-to-feed-millions-of-children-over-the-summer\">called P-EBT\u003c/a>, began with the pandemic in March 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It was a godsend,\" Barron says of the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). \"We were able to actually get through the whole month without trying to think about, 'Oh, we have to go to the food [pantry].' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That changed after Barron's school district reopened for in-person learning. Because a COVID-19 vaccine wasn't yet available for her 10-year-old son and her daughter struggles with asthma, Barron felt safer keeping them home again this school year and enrolling them in the district's online academy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is that, \u003ca href=\"https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/resource-files/Attachment-1-PEBT-QA-School-Year-2021-2022.pdf\">according to USDA guidance\u003c/a>, \"a virtual academy, whether administered by the State or the school district, is not eligible to participate in the [National School Lunch Program (NSLP)].\" Which means no P-EBT this year for families like Barron's.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The guidance excludes some students who are still learning remotely\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Most schools in the U.S. started the 2021-'22 school year in person, including Barron's district. But, she says, \"I decided what was best for my children was to have them attend the distance learning academy.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That academy is run by White Bear Lake Area Schools (WBLAS), and \u003ca href=\"https://www.isd624.org/academics/distance-learning-academy\">according to its website\u003c/a> is \"taught by WBLAS teachers, aligned with WBLAS curriculum and Minnesota state standards and designed to meet the same high levels of academic rigor present in traditional in-person school.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, Barron's kids still attend public school – just online. She was shocked when she realized, months into the school year, that decision meant they no longer qualified for P-EBT.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barron took her confusion and frustration to social media in January. Her story appeared \u003ca href=\"https://thecounter.org/p-ebt-families-children-virtual-learning-school-lunch-hunger/\">in The Counter\u003c/a>, a food journalism website, and she even \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/jojomagicc/status/1482063767202680844?s=20&t=lbjK6O2TOxuQALHmARGeFw\">challenged NPR on Twitter\u003c/a>: \"Will you write an article on P-ebt and how virtual student[s] are left out\"?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>USDA, meanwhile, says students cannot receive P-EBT benefits this year if they attend a program that has not traditionally offered school meals, like a virtual academy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Benefits are available to children who would have received free or reduced price meals at their schools... if not for their schools' closure or reduced attendance or hours in response to the COVID emergency,\" a USDA spokesperson tells NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\"I feel like I was punished for making the best choice for my child.\"\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://www.brookings.edu/research/an-update-on-the-effect-of-pandemic-ebt-on-measures-of-food-hardship/\">an analysis by the Brookings Institution,\u003c/a> P-EBT \"significantly reduced food hardship in the winter, spring, and summer of 2020-21.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anti-hunger advocates say it's important for policymakers to understand that some families still don't feel comfortable returning to brick-and-mortar schools, and the USDA shouldn't simply cut them off from money that helped put food on their tables last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We're trying to fit the current problem into rules that were designed pre-pandemic,\" says Rachel Cooper, a senior policy analyst with the nonprofit think tank Every Texan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, virtual academies are traditionally excluded from the school lunch program, Cooper says, but there's nothing traditional about this school year. Many vulnerable children depended on P-EBT last year and are now enrolled in virtual schools because of continued COVID concerns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many places, these academies are families' only remaining online option.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cooper says the USDA is forcing some families to choose between keeping children home, for fear of COVID, and sending them back to school so they can receive free breakfast and lunch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"That is a choice that we shouldn't be forcing families to make. It is a technicality that is playing out on the most vulnerable families,\" she explains. \"\u003cem>Kinship\u003c/em> families – kids being raised by grandparents who are at high risk themselves, and ... they're on fixed incomes. P-EBT and free school meals are critical for them. And so having it cut off really means there's nothing to put on the dinner table.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many parents and caregivers, including Barron, say they had no idea enrolling in a virtual academy would cut off access to P-EBT. Barron's district is still offering meals to go, but they must be picked up and Barron has no car.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I feel like I was punished for making the best choice for my child,\" Barron says. \"I never wanted to keep my children away from school.\" They loved school, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Not all students have been cut off from P-EBT\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>USDA's guidance does allow P-EBT for students who are learning virtually \u003cem>temporarily\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students who attend schools that participate in the school lunch program and \"that adopt a hybrid schedule or temporarily switch to virtual instruction in response to COVID are eligible for P-EBT benefits on those remote learning days,\" a USDA spokesperson tells NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to continue to provide P-EBT benefits, even in these limited situations, states must meet strict new USDA reporting requirements – and before they can access the funds, they have to submit plans outlining how they'll do that. Halfway through this school year, 29 states have submitted their plans. \u003ca href=\"https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/state-guidance-coronavirus-pandemic-ebt-pebt\">Just 12 have been approved\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"USDA is requiring that [schools] have a process to be able to track those individual kids [who are receiving P-EBT]. And that's not data that states and school districts ever really track,\" says Lisa Davis, senior vice president of Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry campaign. \"It's very, very onerous to determine if Susie's out because of COVID or for another reason ... so because of that, we know that some states have been hesitant to apply [for P-EBT].\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Nobody's ill-intentioned,\" Davis says, pointing out that USDA can no longer make broad assumptions about who qualifies for P-EBT as it did last year, when entire districts were remote. But asking schools to meet strict new rules and provide more detailed data, especially when staffing has been stretched thin by the surge in coronavirus cases, is unrealistic in many places, if not impossible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Davis warns of another crisis looming: States that don't submit a school-year P-EBT plan won't be able to offer the program to students \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/990860172/usda-moves-to-feed-millions-of-children-over-the-summer\">over the summer\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Some+families+are+being+forced+to+choose+between+remote+learning+and+school+meals&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Where are the students? For a second straight year, school enrollment is dropping",
"title": "Where are the students? For a second straight year, school enrollment is dropping",
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"content": "\u003cp>The troubling enrollment losses that school districts reported last year have in many places continued this fall, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt public education across the country, an NPR investigation has found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We compiled the latest headcount data directly from more than 600 districts in 23 states and Washington, D.C., including statewide data from Massachusetts, Georgia and Alabama. We found that very few districts, especially larger ones, have returned to pre-pandemic numbers. Most are now posting a second straight year of declines. This is particularly true in some of the nation's largest systems:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New York City's school enrollment dropped by about 38,000 students last school year and another 13,000 this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Los Angeles, the student population declined by 17,000 students last school year, and nearly 9,000 this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Chicago public schools, enrollment dropped by 14,000 last year, and another 10,000 this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"When I talk to my colleagues ... across the country, there's a lot of concern right now,\" says Chicago schools chief Pedro Martinez. \"Pre-pandemic, we were already seeing enrollment decline. So it wasn't that we had stability. What happened during COVID, we just saw an increase in the number that didn't come.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2019-2020, \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/06_28_2021.asp\">public school enrollment \u003c/a>dropped by 3 percent nationwide, erasing a decade of slow gains. The decline was attributed largely to COVID-related disruptions, and was concentrated in the early grades. Many families simply opted out of remote learning in the non-compulsory grades of pre-K and kindergarten. School leaders hoped this year would bring recovery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To the contrary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our sample is neither comprehensive nor necessarily representative, but it is large enough to suggest some important patterns. This reporting builds on \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/10/09/920316481/enrollment-is-dropping-in-public-schools-around-the-country\">NPR's reporting from 2020\u003c/a>, which documented enrollment drops at a similar sample of districts across the country. That finding was substantiated nine months later by the National Center for Education Statistics, including the fact that enrollment losses in public schools were greatest in pre-K and kindergarten.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Where have the students gone? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Educators and researchers we spoke with gave several possible explanations for the continuing falloff: an increase in home-schooling, a shift to charter schools and private schools, another year of delays in entering pre-K or kindergarten, and families moving to enroll in districts that weren't captured in our sample.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But educators are most worried about vulnerable students who may have fallen through the cracks in the widespread economic and social disruption caused by the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We think we found most of them, but there are still probably a thousand kids out there, we just don't know what happened to them,\" says Dallas Superintendent Michael Hinojosa. \"Other urban superintendents are telling me they have significantly higher numbers of students that they're really worried about.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Below are some of the enrollment trends we found this year and what they say about the pandemic's lingering impact — as well as what school leaders are doing to win back families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Some of the youngest students still have not enrolled\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2020, federal data found a remarkable, 13 percent drop in pre-K and kindergarten enrollment. Districts hoped to see many of these children arrive this fall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Champlain Valley, Vermont's largest school district, enrollment hasn't returned to pre-pandemic levels, but the schools are seeing a kindergarten bump this fall. \"Some of these students were held out of school during the pandemic so they could start kindergarten this year,\" says the district's superintendent, Rene Sanchez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Half the kids we lost were pre-K kids,\" says Hinojosa in Dallas. Over the summer, he says, his team mounted \"a very intentional drive in the community to get those kids back.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While some did return, overall enrollment in the Dallas Independent School District remains down more than 10,000 students from fall 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The challenge now, for educators, is understanding where those young children and their older siblings went. Did they simply stay home — or did their families enroll them elsewhere?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A shift to private schools \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Private and parochial schools generally enroll about 10 percent of all students in the United States, or about \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgc\">5.7 million students.\u003c/a> While nationwide enrollment in private schools dropped last year along with public schools, this year it has rebounded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The National Association of Independent Schools comprises private, non-parochial schools. They report a net enrollment growth of 1.7% over the two pandemic years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's a particularly big rebound in private preschool enrollment in the NAIS sample. That number dropped dramatically between 2019-20 and 2020-21, but then grew 21% this fall for a net growth of 6% over two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While accurate data are not yet available for parochial schools, media reports suggest their enrollment has rebounded this fall as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We saw a couple thousand students that transferred over to private schools in the city,\" says Martinez, who took over as chief executive officer this summer in Chicago. \"And that was because the private schools were assuring the families that they would be open in-person, no matter what.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similarly, \"the New Hampshire \u003ca href=\"https://www.wmur.com/article/nh-catholic-school-enrollment-goes-up-after-incentive-program-announced/33405573\">diocese gave some significant discounts\u003c/a> for folks to come [last school year], and it made it really affordable for some families to have that option,\" says John Goldhardt, the superintendent in Manchester, that state's largest district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah McVay pulled her children from the Seattle Public Schools this fall. \"We stuck it out the pandemic year — bad choice — and my 3rd grader essentially sat bored, learning very little all year,\" she says. \"The number of tech issues was infuriating ... it was constant.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McVay says a staffing change announced at the end of the last school year for seniority reasons, which would have left her son with a long-term substitute, was the last straw.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tim Robinson, lead media relations specialist for the Seattle schools, acknowledged the difficulties some parents faced last year amid the disruption. \"We recognize – and always did recognize – that remote learning presented many challenges,\" he said. \"And we are very pleased to be able to be back in the classroom this year.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Seattle Public Schools report that the district has lost 6.4% of its students since the start of the pandemic. Statewide, districts in Washington are down 3.5% in the same time period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We moved to Concordia Lutheran,\" McVay says. \"We aren't Lutheran, or even religious, and it was an act of desperation. But it has been truly amazing, and we are going to stay through 8th now.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The charter school factor\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the fall of 2020, charter schools, which are publicly funded but run separately from districts, saw a \u003ca href=\"https://www.publiccharters.org/sites/default/files/documents/2021-09/napcs_voting_feet_rd6.pdf\">7 percent jump in enrollment\u003c/a>, adding about 240,000 students nationwide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It translated to the single highest year, in terms of raw numbers, that we've ever seen charter schools grow,\" says Debbie Veney at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. This figure included a big jump at \u003cem>virtual\u003c/em> charter schools — a controversial, largely for-profit sector.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fall 2021 that story has shifted: K12 Inc and Connections Academy, the nation's largest virtual charter providers, told NPR their enrollment is relatively flat from last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile some brick and mortar charters continue to gain students, as NPR's examination of statewide data in Massachusetts and Georgia showed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In New York City, the KIPP charter school network opened three new schools this fall, fueling an enrollment jump of 11 percent. In fact, KIPP schools in the city grew during both pandemic years, to a total of 7,150 students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We benefited just from having deep relationships with our families for retention,\" says Jane Martinez Dowling, KIPP NYC's external chief officer. \"And we sort of doubled down on making sure that we were in touch with our families, that we did have different modes of going out there and doing recruitment even during COVID.\" This included multilingual advertising in local publications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Rochester, N.Y., public schools, enrollment has fallen from 25,000 before the pandemic to around 22,000 this year, says Lesli Myers-Small, the superintendent. Almost 7,000 students now attend local charters, which, she says, tells her: \"We have to make our schools attractive again.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Homeschooling is up, too\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Public schools face competition not just from charters and private schools, but from families who have chosen to keep their kids home another year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Rochester, the district's homeschooling numbers are still above average, \"because we are limiting the remote options this year,\" says Myers-Small. \"And we recognize and honor the fact that it might be concerning or scary\" for some parents to send their children back to school at this point, especially with fresh fears around the Omicron variant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A rise in remote work, and the experience of managing students' virtual learning, may have made more families take a serious look at teaching their children at home. Yet \u003ca href=\"https://hslda.org/legal?gclid=Cj0KCQiAzMGNBhCyARIsANpUkzOl7oiws5PD2sayHFGmI1fFv72H55Mnx4yGPQi8huJAC1KNyVgVPfYaAtJOEALw_wcB\">homeschooling oversight \u003c/a>varies widely from state to state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Errick Greene, the superintendent of the Jackson, Miss., public schools, worries about \"bootleg homeschooling\" — families that may be keeping children at home, but not necessarily giving them a thorough education. \u003ca href=\"https://hslda.org/legal/mississippi?gclid=Cj0KCQiAzMGNBhCyARIsANpUkzOl7oiws5PD2sayHFGmI1fFv72H55Mnx4yGPQi8huJAC1KNyVgVPfYaAtJOEALw_wcB\">Mississippi has no testing requirement\u003c/a>s, no teacher qualifications and no mandated subjects for homeschooled students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For some parents, continuing concerns about safety are driving them to keep their children home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tanesha Grant, the founder of Parents Supporting Parents New York City, represents a group of about 250 families who, she says, were \"traumatized\" by the pandemic. They are keeping their kids home from public school, but not officially removing them from the district. They call themselves \"school strikers,\" holding out for a permanent remote option because they don't see school as safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Black and brown families we know are disproportionately affected and have had someone die or have COVID-19 in their families,\" Grant says. \"We live in multigenerational homes. We are still in mourning and still traumatized.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lingering concerns about COVID rules and enforcement \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>COVID safety protocols have been polarizing and politicized in this country, and that is keeping a vocal minority of parents away from public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We have people in our community that are anti-mask. I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying, they have their right to self-identify that way,\" says Jon Dean, the schools superintendent in Grosse Pointe, Mich. \"We exist in a county that has a mask mandate. So we know we have families that are not attending right now because masks are mandatory in our school district.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dean says parents' frustrations over masking requirements showed up in surveys of families who have opted out of public school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Goldhardt, in Manchester, also saw students leave for private schools with looser COVID rules. \"They didn't require masking ... and we did.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>High school students are dropping out to work \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students opting out for charters, private schools or homeschooling can hurt public schools because their funding is based on headcount. For the moment, federal relief funds may cover for revenue lost to enrollment drops, but that money is designed to phase out in several years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Declining district enrollment is also a community-wide matter, because strong public schools are a selling point for businesses and homebuyers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the biggest concern for the country at large is students who drop out of school entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Baltimore, John Davis, the city's chief of schools, says his district used federal relief dollars to actively find and reconnect with these students over the summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Literally, just do outreach nonstop ... We made \u003cem>thousands\u003c/em> of contacts. Those folks did a wonderful job, and I think that's why we, overall, didn't see a huge decline [this school year],\" Davis says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Superintendents say they are often losing students to paid jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"A lot of my principals were saying, 'Dr. Small, we're losing kids. They're telling us, I have to work,' \" says Myers-Small in Rochester. \"We did talk to some businesses and said, 'Listen, you know, Cory should not be working [at this time]. School is in session. He is a student.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Myers-Small says Rochester has increased opportunities for working students to make up lost credits online.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We ... knew that we were fighting against survival and poverty,\" she explains. \"We wanted to make sure that there were learning opportunities in the afternoon and evening, and we track that we had some scholars who were logging on at seven or eight o'clock at night and doing their coursework.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Jackson, Miss., Superintendent Greene says that, during remote learning, teachers told him of students \"who were on Zoom calls during the day \u003cem>and\u003c/em> at work.\" He says some of his principals and staff have reached out to local business-owners to plead for students to have shifts that start after a particular required course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greene says he's tried hard not to force these teens to choose between school and work, and the district is designing a new, fully virtual option for working students or anyone who thrives learning from home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"School does not have to happen in the hours in which it happens right now. You know, late afternoon, early evening, weekends,\" Greene says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Dallas, educators are trying to help working students by offering night school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It has become popular because now these kids have started making some money, and their families depend on them,\" says Superintendent Hinojosa. \"And they don't want to give up their jobs. And so we had to find a different way to meet their needs.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>'We need you back'\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Superintendents across the country tell NPR the pandemic pushed many families to think more deeply about each child's education — what they need and how best to get it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I think families have a desire to gain more control of their lives,\" says Ed Graff, the superintendent of the Minneapolis public schools, where enrollment has also continued to decline. \"The public education landscape has changed significantly, and families are making calculated decisions to pursue other learning options that are best for their children and for themselves.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's one reason Hinojosa, in Dallas, put up billboards. \"We got very aggressive with families and said, 'We need you back,' \" he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His district paid for billboards along the city's roadways, display ads on buses, even in convenience stores — an approach pioneered by charter schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We have [an image of] a little kid with a stethoscope and a doctor's jacket — to say, 'Look, these kids are going to become doctors, but, if they don't come back to school, they're going to fall further behind.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Roughly 40,000 children attend Dallas-area charter schools, and Hinojosa says he's had to get creative, even before the pandemic, reaching families and winning them over. Now, he says, they're pulling out all the stops, including the creation of new schools with more popular curricular offerings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We embrace competition, which makes us better,\" Hinojosa says. \"And I think we're beating them.\" Though that's not yet reflected in the district's enrollment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Where+are+the+students%3F+For+a+second+straight+year%2C+school+enrollment+is+dropping&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The declines many school districts reported last year have continued, an NPR investigation finds. What educators don't know is where those students have gone.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The troubling enrollment losses that school districts reported last year have in many places continued this fall, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt public education across the country, an NPR investigation has found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We compiled the latest headcount data directly from more than 600 districts in 23 states and Washington, D.C., including statewide data from Massachusetts, Georgia and Alabama. We found that very few districts, especially larger ones, have returned to pre-pandemic numbers. Most are now posting a second straight year of declines. This is particularly true in some of the nation's largest systems:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New York City's school enrollment dropped by about 38,000 students last school year and another 13,000 this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Los Angeles, the student population declined by 17,000 students last school year, and nearly 9,000 this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Chicago public schools, enrollment dropped by 14,000 last year, and another 10,000 this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"When I talk to my colleagues ... across the country, there's a lot of concern right now,\" says Chicago schools chief Pedro Martinez. \"Pre-pandemic, we were already seeing enrollment decline. So it wasn't that we had stability. What happened during COVID, we just saw an increase in the number that didn't come.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2019-2020, \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/06_28_2021.asp\">public school enrollment \u003c/a>dropped by 3 percent nationwide, erasing a decade of slow gains. The decline was attributed largely to COVID-related disruptions, and was concentrated in the early grades. Many families simply opted out of remote learning in the non-compulsory grades of pre-K and kindergarten. School leaders hoped this year would bring recovery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To the contrary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our sample is neither comprehensive nor necessarily representative, but it is large enough to suggest some important patterns. This reporting builds on \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/10/09/920316481/enrollment-is-dropping-in-public-schools-around-the-country\">NPR's reporting from 2020\u003c/a>, which documented enrollment drops at a similar sample of districts across the country. That finding was substantiated nine months later by the National Center for Education Statistics, including the fact that enrollment losses in public schools were greatest in pre-K and kindergarten.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Where have the students gone? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Educators and researchers we spoke with gave several possible explanations for the continuing falloff: an increase in home-schooling, a shift to charter schools and private schools, another year of delays in entering pre-K or kindergarten, and families moving to enroll in districts that weren't captured in our sample.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But educators are most worried about vulnerable students who may have fallen through the cracks in the widespread economic and social disruption caused by the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We think we found most of them, but there are still probably a thousand kids out there, we just don't know what happened to them,\" says Dallas Superintendent Michael Hinojosa. \"Other urban superintendents are telling me they have significantly higher numbers of students that they're really worried about.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Below are some of the enrollment trends we found this year and what they say about the pandemic's lingering impact — as well as what school leaders are doing to win back families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Some of the youngest students still have not enrolled\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2020, federal data found a remarkable, 13 percent drop in pre-K and kindergarten enrollment. Districts hoped to see many of these children arrive this fall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Champlain Valley, Vermont's largest school district, enrollment hasn't returned to pre-pandemic levels, but the schools are seeing a kindergarten bump this fall. \"Some of these students were held out of school during the pandemic so they could start kindergarten this year,\" says the district's superintendent, Rene Sanchez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Half the kids we lost were pre-K kids,\" says Hinojosa in Dallas. Over the summer, he says, his team mounted \"a very intentional drive in the community to get those kids back.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While some did return, overall enrollment in the Dallas Independent School District remains down more than 10,000 students from fall 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The challenge now, for educators, is understanding where those young children and their older siblings went. Did they simply stay home — or did their families enroll them elsewhere?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A shift to private schools \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Private and parochial schools generally enroll about 10 percent of all students in the United States, or about \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgc\">5.7 million students.\u003c/a> While nationwide enrollment in private schools dropped last year along with public schools, this year it has rebounded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The National Association of Independent Schools comprises private, non-parochial schools. They report a net enrollment growth of 1.7% over the two pandemic years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's a particularly big rebound in private preschool enrollment in the NAIS sample. That number dropped dramatically between 2019-20 and 2020-21, but then grew 21% this fall for a net growth of 6% over two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While accurate data are not yet available for parochial schools, media reports suggest their enrollment has rebounded this fall as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We saw a couple thousand students that transferred over to private schools in the city,\" says Martinez, who took over as chief executive officer this summer in Chicago. \"And that was because the private schools were assuring the families that they would be open in-person, no matter what.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similarly, \"the New Hampshire \u003ca href=\"https://www.wmur.com/article/nh-catholic-school-enrollment-goes-up-after-incentive-program-announced/33405573\">diocese gave some significant discounts\u003c/a> for folks to come [last school year], and it made it really affordable for some families to have that option,\" says John Goldhardt, the superintendent in Manchester, that state's largest district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah McVay pulled her children from the Seattle Public Schools this fall. \"We stuck it out the pandemic year — bad choice — and my 3rd grader essentially sat bored, learning very little all year,\" she says. \"The number of tech issues was infuriating ... it was constant.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McVay says a staffing change announced at the end of the last school year for seniority reasons, which would have left her son with a long-term substitute, was the last straw.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tim Robinson, lead media relations specialist for the Seattle schools, acknowledged the difficulties some parents faced last year amid the disruption. \"We recognize – and always did recognize – that remote learning presented many challenges,\" he said. \"And we are very pleased to be able to be back in the classroom this year.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Seattle Public Schools report that the district has lost 6.4% of its students since the start of the pandemic. Statewide, districts in Washington are down 3.5% in the same time period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We moved to Concordia Lutheran,\" McVay says. \"We aren't Lutheran, or even religious, and it was an act of desperation. But it has been truly amazing, and we are going to stay through 8th now.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The charter school factor\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the fall of 2020, charter schools, which are publicly funded but run separately from districts, saw a \u003ca href=\"https://www.publiccharters.org/sites/default/files/documents/2021-09/napcs_voting_feet_rd6.pdf\">7 percent jump in enrollment\u003c/a>, adding about 240,000 students nationwide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It translated to the single highest year, in terms of raw numbers, that we've ever seen charter schools grow,\" says Debbie Veney at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. This figure included a big jump at \u003cem>virtual\u003c/em> charter schools — a controversial, largely for-profit sector.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fall 2021 that story has shifted: K12 Inc and Connections Academy, the nation's largest virtual charter providers, told NPR their enrollment is relatively flat from last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile some brick and mortar charters continue to gain students, as NPR's examination of statewide data in Massachusetts and Georgia showed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In New York City, the KIPP charter school network opened three new schools this fall, fueling an enrollment jump of 11 percent. In fact, KIPP schools in the city grew during both pandemic years, to a total of 7,150 students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We benefited just from having deep relationships with our families for retention,\" says Jane Martinez Dowling, KIPP NYC's external chief officer. \"And we sort of doubled down on making sure that we were in touch with our families, that we did have different modes of going out there and doing recruitment even during COVID.\" This included multilingual advertising in local publications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Rochester, N.Y., public schools, enrollment has fallen from 25,000 before the pandemic to around 22,000 this year, says Lesli Myers-Small, the superintendent. Almost 7,000 students now attend local charters, which, she says, tells her: \"We have to make our schools attractive again.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Homeschooling is up, too\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Public schools face competition not just from charters and private schools, but from families who have chosen to keep their kids home another year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Rochester, the district's homeschooling numbers are still above average, \"because we are limiting the remote options this year,\" says Myers-Small. \"And we recognize and honor the fact that it might be concerning or scary\" for some parents to send their children back to school at this point, especially with fresh fears around the Omicron variant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A rise in remote work, and the experience of managing students' virtual learning, may have made more families take a serious look at teaching their children at home. Yet \u003ca href=\"https://hslda.org/legal?gclid=Cj0KCQiAzMGNBhCyARIsANpUkzOl7oiws5PD2sayHFGmI1fFv72H55Mnx4yGPQi8huJAC1KNyVgVPfYaAtJOEALw_wcB\">homeschooling oversight \u003c/a>varies widely from state to state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Errick Greene, the superintendent of the Jackson, Miss., public schools, worries about \"bootleg homeschooling\" — families that may be keeping children at home, but not necessarily giving them a thorough education. \u003ca href=\"https://hslda.org/legal/mississippi?gclid=Cj0KCQiAzMGNBhCyARIsANpUkzOl7oiws5PD2sayHFGmI1fFv72H55Mnx4yGPQi8huJAC1KNyVgVPfYaAtJOEALw_wcB\">Mississippi has no testing requirement\u003c/a>s, no teacher qualifications and no mandated subjects for homeschooled students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For some parents, continuing concerns about safety are driving them to keep their children home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tanesha Grant, the founder of Parents Supporting Parents New York City, represents a group of about 250 families who, she says, were \"traumatized\" by the pandemic. They are keeping their kids home from public school, but not officially removing them from the district. They call themselves \"school strikers,\" holding out for a permanent remote option because they don't see school as safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Black and brown families we know are disproportionately affected and have had someone die or have COVID-19 in their families,\" Grant says. \"We live in multigenerational homes. We are still in mourning and still traumatized.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lingering concerns about COVID rules and enforcement \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>COVID safety protocols have been polarizing and politicized in this country, and that is keeping a vocal minority of parents away from public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We have people in our community that are anti-mask. I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying, they have their right to self-identify that way,\" says Jon Dean, the schools superintendent in Grosse Pointe, Mich. \"We exist in a county that has a mask mandate. So we know we have families that are not attending right now because masks are mandatory in our school district.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dean says parents' frustrations over masking requirements showed up in surveys of families who have opted out of public school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Goldhardt, in Manchester, also saw students leave for private schools with looser COVID rules. \"They didn't require masking ... and we did.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>High school students are dropping out to work \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students opting out for charters, private schools or homeschooling can hurt public schools because their funding is based on headcount. For the moment, federal relief funds may cover for revenue lost to enrollment drops, but that money is designed to phase out in several years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Declining district enrollment is also a community-wide matter, because strong public schools are a selling point for businesses and homebuyers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the biggest concern for the country at large is students who drop out of school entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Baltimore, John Davis, the city's chief of schools, says his district used federal relief dollars to actively find and reconnect with these students over the summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Literally, just do outreach nonstop ... We made \u003cem>thousands\u003c/em> of contacts. Those folks did a wonderful job, and I think that's why we, overall, didn't see a huge decline [this school year],\" Davis says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Superintendents say they are often losing students to paid jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"A lot of my principals were saying, 'Dr. Small, we're losing kids. They're telling us, I have to work,' \" says Myers-Small in Rochester. \"We did talk to some businesses and said, 'Listen, you know, Cory should not be working [at this time]. School is in session. He is a student.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Myers-Small says Rochester has increased opportunities for working students to make up lost credits online.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We ... knew that we were fighting against survival and poverty,\" she explains. \"We wanted to make sure that there were learning opportunities in the afternoon and evening, and we track that we had some scholars who were logging on at seven or eight o'clock at night and doing their coursework.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Jackson, Miss., Superintendent Greene says that, during remote learning, teachers told him of students \"who were on Zoom calls during the day \u003cem>and\u003c/em> at work.\" He says some of his principals and staff have reached out to local business-owners to plead for students to have shifts that start after a particular required course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greene says he's tried hard not to force these teens to choose between school and work, and the district is designing a new, fully virtual option for working students or anyone who thrives learning from home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"School does not have to happen in the hours in which it happens right now. You know, late afternoon, early evening, weekends,\" Greene says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Dallas, educators are trying to help working students by offering night school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It has become popular because now these kids have started making some money, and their families depend on them,\" says Superintendent Hinojosa. \"And they don't want to give up their jobs. And so we had to find a different way to meet their needs.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>'We need you back'\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Superintendents across the country tell NPR the pandemic pushed many families to think more deeply about each child's education — what they need and how best to get it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I think families have a desire to gain more control of their lives,\" says Ed Graff, the superintendent of the Minneapolis public schools, where enrollment has also continued to decline. \"The public education landscape has changed significantly, and families are making calculated decisions to pursue other learning options that are best for their children and for themselves.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's one reason Hinojosa, in Dallas, put up billboards. \"We got very aggressive with families and said, 'We need you back,' \" he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His district paid for billboards along the city's roadways, display ads on buses, even in convenience stores — an approach pioneered by charter schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We have [an image of] a little kid with a stethoscope and a doctor's jacket — to say, 'Look, these kids are going to become doctors, but, if they don't come back to school, they're going to fall further behind.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Roughly 40,000 children attend Dallas-area charter schools, and Hinojosa says he's had to get creative, even before the pandemic, reaching families and winning them over. Now, he says, they're pulling out all the stops, including the creation of new schools with more popular curricular offerings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We embrace competition, which makes us better,\" Hinojosa says. \"And I think we're beating them.\" Though that's not yet reflected in the district's enrollment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Where+are+the+students%3F+For+a+second+straight+year%2C+school+enrollment+is+dropping&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Teacher Leah Calote pulled up a big digital stopwatch on her shared screen. “You are going to have 90 seconds to grab anything around you to make a party costume,” she told the advanced theater arts students in her Zoom classroom. It was March 2021, and Rancho Campana High School, like others in California, was operating virtually amid the COVID-19 pandemic. At the word “go,” students ducked out of view or switched off their cameras while they assembled impromptu get-ups.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some students donned a wig or Halloween mask. One wore a banana-colored hoodie and clutched a Curious George toy to be “the man in the yellow hat.” Another applied magenta lipstick and tugged on a blazer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Ally, what are you?” Calote asked the blazer-wearer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I am a girl boss!” the teen replied, flashing victory ‘v’s with her fingers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Oh, yeah, you are!” Calote said, laughing. “Girl boss! 2021!”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Calote’s classes, students spend a lot of time in character. But when they’re not performing, she wants them to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57646/how-unconditional-positive-regard-can-help-students-feel-cared-for\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">feel safe just being themselves\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. To encourage that, Calote tries to model it. She participates in warm-up games, shares parts of her life from beyond school, and, perhaps most importantly, she’s honest about her emotions, both the highs and the lows. “You have to have boundaries,” Calote says, but she advocates “being generous with the things that you can so that (students) can feel safe being generous and compassionate with each other.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That kind of openness is not the norm, according to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://education.virginia.edu/patricia-jennings\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Patricia Jennings\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a University of Virginia researcher who studies teacher stress and how it affects the social emotional context of the classroom. Jennings said that our modern education system tends to view teachers “as people who are always sweet and wonderful and nice and kind and engaged.” But that ideal is impossible to maintain 100% of the time. “Of course, we as teachers all have feelings. And so what happens is teachers suppress those uncomfortable feelings.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Suppressing negative emotions isn’t good for anyone, Jennings said. It just makes stress worse. The coronavirus pandemic has brought that reality into focus for educators. Over the past year and half, teachers have described the heavy burden of worrying about their students’ academic progress and their own health while being \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58221/down-with-toxic-positivity-for-teachers-and-students-healing-isnt-blind-optimism\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">asked to embody a constant “we can do this!” spirit\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in the face of frequent changes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Calote, being truthful about the challenges has been the only realistic way to survive the rollercoaster of uncertainty — and help her students do the same. While \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-teachers-who-might-quit-are-really-thinking/2021/10\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">many teachers have contemplated quitting\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> during the pandemic, Calote’s approach has helped her reaffirm that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/RanchoBackstage/status/1405217960516485121\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">she belongs in the classroom\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC9181391206\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003cb>Seeing the tears\u003c/b>\u003c/h1>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the nadirs for Calote’s advanced theater class came in early April. Throughout the prior summer and fall, the veteran teacher put a lot of effort into learning the ropes of digital theater. In the spring, her students dove into creating a show that they could perform on Zoom. They decided to do two versions of the murder mystery Clue — one traditional and one with a modern twist. In both versions, the audience would be able to visit different virtual rooms and make choices that affected the story.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was exciting. It was innovative. “What you are doing is not being done in most places in the world,” Calote told the young thespians.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then, after months of adapting to a new artistic form, Calote received an unexpected email from the superintendent. The \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/960901166/how-is-the-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-going-in-your-state\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">coronavirus vaccine\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was rolling out across the country. Pressure to reopen school buildings was mounting. Calote’s superintendent wrote that district teachers would be mandated to return to school buildings within a few weeks.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The news sent Calote reeling. She worried for own health. She worried for her students who weren’t old enough to be vaccinated. And she quickly realized that their plans for Clue would be untenable in the new arrangement.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because Calote’s classroom at Rancho Campana has no windows, her principal said the school would place air scrubbers near the door. Those machines are loud. Students who remained virtual would hear a sound like a constant ocean wave when Calote or her in-person students spoke into their microphones. Even those in the classroom would have a hard time hearing each other through the noise and masks. The interactive Zoom show they’d been planning could not go on.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Calote’s voice shook as she broke the news to her students over Zoom. “Sorry, I’m trying to like, stay calm. My heart is beating really fast right now,” she said. As she spoke, students sent her messages like, “I’m so sorry you have to go in like this. It’s unfair,” and “It’s OK, Ms. Calote, you’ve done so much for us.” Seeing the messages, Calote’s tears spilled over. She reached for a tissue and wiped her eyes. Then she promised students that she’d find new, safe ways for them to perform and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58668/how-arts-practices-can-be-the-foundation-of-teaching-and-learning\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">create\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “It’ll, it’ll be fine,” she said. “I know it doesn’t look like it right now because I’m kind of a mess. But, you know, it’s very shocking and pretty new.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a moment like this, many teachers might have tried to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/22/450575463/it-s-okay-to-cry-in-your-car-fighting-disillusionment-as-a-first-year-teacher\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">hide their tears\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> until they were off camera or students left the room. But that’s not always possible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“When you’re in a classroom with a bunch of students and you’re all basically captive in this room, you can’t leave,” said Jennings, the UVA professor. “When your emotions get the best of you, you have to manage them in front of everybody. You have no privacy.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is it OK for teachers to cry in class? Jennings said it’s a difficult question to answer, and it depends. But when a teacher and her students are facing a major disappointment like Calote’s class was, “being honest makes a lot of sense. … I’m sure (crying is) not your first go-to in any given situation. But when it happens, I think it’s OK.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003cb>Permission to feel\u003c/b>\u003c/h1>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Calote hadn’t expected to cry that day, but she didn’t feel bad about it either. “I just did the best I could, and I knew that it’s safe to be expressive and truthful with that particular group. I didn’t need to act and put on, like, a brave face,” she said. After all, she’d been honest all year long about how the pandemic was affecting her, in hopes that students would feel comfortable \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58663/pediatricians-say-the-mental-health-crisis-among-kids-has-become-a-national-emergency\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">doing the same\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/RanchoBackstage/status/1395090767245320197\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jennings said it’s true that being emotionally vulnerable can give students permission to feel their own emotions. That was the case for Allison Gertler, a junior in Calote’s theater class last spring. She said she was angry at how the district’s sudden change in plans disrupted their show, and she was glad Calote didn’t try to shrug it off. “I feel like so much of school has this almost fake positivity energy. But when we come in this class, it’s actually, you know, it’s real.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In addition to giving students \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57992/the-importance-of-mourning-losses-even-when-they-seem-small\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">permission to feel\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Jennings said that teachers can use their own stressors to model how to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57002/how-mindfulness-during-class-can-help-students-and-teachers\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">recognize and respond to those emotions\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. For instance, if a teacher is feeling frustrated — “which happens a lot” — they can narrate their observations and responses: “Oh, I’m noticing how frustrated I’m feeling. My shoulders are getting tense. My jaw is getting tense. I’m feeling hot. I need to take some breaths and calm myself down.” These teaching moments can provide real examples to complement more structured \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56268/how-learning-emotional-skills-can-help-boys-become-men\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">social emotional learning activities\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in schools.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003cb>Building social connections\u003c/b>\u003c/h1>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are other ways that a teacher being emotionally vulnerable can positively impact students, too. Jennings said it can be “an exercise in perspective-taking” and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58638/listening-to-learn-why-ear-hustle-stories-about-prison-life-is-so-engaging-to-students\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">foster empathy\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Take Bailey Venzon as an example. She was a senior last spring, and she said that seeing Calote cry was “a wake up call that the students aren’t the only ones that are having a hard time.” It made her appreciate how teachers “learned to do everything virtually just so they can teach us new things.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sharing feelings also builds social connections, according to Jennings. “And students feeling connected to their teachers, we know from lots of research, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54878/how-strengthening-relationships-with-boys-can-help-them-learn\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">helps kids\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Venzon said she and her peers already felt connected to Calote because they knew she was an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58487/how-parents-can-have-conversations-that-motivate-teens\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">empathetic listener\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: “She’s kind of like the airbags where she just stops you before hitting your head on the wheel.” But being on the other side strengthened the bond. “Since Calote has always been here for us, having her open up to us was kind of like she was saying that she trusts us.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC9181391206\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After Clue was cancelled, Calote’s students spent the remainder of the school year on independent creative projects, such as choreographing a ballet number or designing character makeup. While they didn’t have a stage or Zoom show to look back on, Calote saw those \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57241/six-ways-to-build-community-in-online-classrooms\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">connections they forged\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in the year’s highs and lows as their collective achievement. “Everybody had their moments of darkness and their weeks that were terrible, and we lifted each other up during those times. I’m proud of that,” she said at the end of the year.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/RanchoBackstage/status/1405217960516485121\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For her own creative project, Calote \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/RanchoBackstage/status/1402495170134700032\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">wrote a farewell song\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for the seniors. The lyrics called out some of their shared memories, cheered their next steps and reminded them that “if you ever need support, you know, you’re always welcome here.” During their last class, Calote performed the song on her ukelele — just another medium for being emotionally open with students.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The MindShift team thanks \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/6576424/steve-drummond\">Steve Drummond\u003c/a> for editorial guidance on this story. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Most teachers feel they have to hide negative emotions from students. That puts them in a tough situation because - as we showed in our episode on toxic positivity - research shows suppressing negative emotions can make stress worse. In this minisode, we look at what happens when teachers show their real emotions in class, from the highs to the lows.",
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"title": "Is it OK for teachers to cry in class? | KQED",
"description": "Most teachers feel they have to hide negative emotions from students. That puts them in a tough situation because - as we showed in our episode on toxic positivity - research shows suppressing negative emotions can make stress worse. In this minisode, we look at what happens when teachers show their real emotions in class, from the highs to the lows.",
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"subhead": "What happens if teachers stop putting on a happy face, and start showing their real emotions in the classroom?",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Teacher Leah Calote pulled up a big digital stopwatch on her shared screen. “You are going to have 90 seconds to grab anything around you to make a party costume,” she told the advanced theater arts students in her Zoom classroom. It was March 2021, and Rancho Campana High School, like others in California, was operating virtually amid the COVID-19 pandemic. At the word “go,” students ducked out of view or switched off their cameras while they assembled impromptu get-ups.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some students donned a wig or Halloween mask. One wore a banana-colored hoodie and clutched a Curious George toy to be “the man in the yellow hat.” Another applied magenta lipstick and tugged on a blazer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Ally, what are you?” Calote asked the blazer-wearer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I am a girl boss!” the teen replied, flashing victory ‘v’s with her fingers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Oh, yeah, you are!” Calote said, laughing. “Girl boss! 2021!”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Calote’s classes, students spend a lot of time in character. But when they’re not performing, she wants them to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57646/how-unconditional-positive-regard-can-help-students-feel-cared-for\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">feel safe just being themselves\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. To encourage that, Calote tries to model it. She participates in warm-up games, shares parts of her life from beyond school, and, perhaps most importantly, she’s honest about her emotions, both the highs and the lows. “You have to have boundaries,” Calote says, but she advocates “being generous with the things that you can so that (students) can feel safe being generous and compassionate with each other.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That kind of openness is not the norm, according to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://education.virginia.edu/patricia-jennings\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Patricia Jennings\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a University of Virginia researcher who studies teacher stress and how it affects the social emotional context of the classroom. Jennings said that our modern education system tends to view teachers “as people who are always sweet and wonderful and nice and kind and engaged.” But that ideal is impossible to maintain 100% of the time. “Of course, we as teachers all have feelings. And so what happens is teachers suppress those uncomfortable feelings.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Suppressing negative emotions isn’t good for anyone, Jennings said. It just makes stress worse. The coronavirus pandemic has brought that reality into focus for educators. Over the past year and half, teachers have described the heavy burden of worrying about their students’ academic progress and their own health while being \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58221/down-with-toxic-positivity-for-teachers-and-students-healing-isnt-blind-optimism\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">asked to embody a constant “we can do this!” spirit\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in the face of frequent changes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Calote, being truthful about the challenges has been the only realistic way to survive the rollercoaster of uncertainty — and help her students do the same. While \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-teachers-who-might-quit-are-really-thinking/2021/10\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">many teachers have contemplated quitting\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> during the pandemic, Calote’s approach has helped her reaffirm that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/RanchoBackstage/status/1405217960516485121\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">she belongs in the classroom\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC9181391206\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003cb>Seeing the tears\u003c/b>\u003c/h1>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the nadirs for Calote’s advanced theater class came in early April. Throughout the prior summer and fall, the veteran teacher put a lot of effort into learning the ropes of digital theater. In the spring, her students dove into creating a show that they could perform on Zoom. They decided to do two versions of the murder mystery Clue — one traditional and one with a modern twist. In both versions, the audience would be able to visit different virtual rooms and make choices that affected the story.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was exciting. It was innovative. “What you are doing is not being done in most places in the world,” Calote told the young thespians.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then, after months of adapting to a new artistic form, Calote received an unexpected email from the superintendent. The \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/960901166/how-is-the-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-going-in-your-state\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">coronavirus vaccine\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was rolling out across the country. Pressure to reopen school buildings was mounting. Calote’s superintendent wrote that district teachers would be mandated to return to school buildings within a few weeks.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The news sent Calote reeling. She worried for own health. She worried for her students who weren’t old enough to be vaccinated. And she quickly realized that their plans for Clue would be untenable in the new arrangement.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because Calote’s classroom at Rancho Campana has no windows, her principal said the school would place air scrubbers near the door. Those machines are loud. Students who remained virtual would hear a sound like a constant ocean wave when Calote or her in-person students spoke into their microphones. Even those in the classroom would have a hard time hearing each other through the noise and masks. The interactive Zoom show they’d been planning could not go on.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Calote’s voice shook as she broke the news to her students over Zoom. “Sorry, I’m trying to like, stay calm. My heart is beating really fast right now,” she said. As she spoke, students sent her messages like, “I’m so sorry you have to go in like this. It’s unfair,” and “It’s OK, Ms. Calote, you’ve done so much for us.” Seeing the messages, Calote’s tears spilled over. She reached for a tissue and wiped her eyes. Then she promised students that she’d find new, safe ways for them to perform and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58668/how-arts-practices-can-be-the-foundation-of-teaching-and-learning\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">create\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “It’ll, it’ll be fine,” she said. “I know it doesn’t look like it right now because I’m kind of a mess. But, you know, it’s very shocking and pretty new.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a moment like this, many teachers might have tried to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/22/450575463/it-s-okay-to-cry-in-your-car-fighting-disillusionment-as-a-first-year-teacher\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">hide their tears\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> until they were off camera or students left the room. But that’s not always possible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“When you’re in a classroom with a bunch of students and you’re all basically captive in this room, you can’t leave,” said Jennings, the UVA professor. “When your emotions get the best of you, you have to manage them in front of everybody. You have no privacy.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is it OK for teachers to cry in class? Jennings said it’s a difficult question to answer, and it depends. But when a teacher and her students are facing a major disappointment like Calote’s class was, “being honest makes a lot of sense. … I’m sure (crying is) not your first go-to in any given situation. But when it happens, I think it’s OK.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003cb>Permission to feel\u003c/b>\u003c/h1>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Calote hadn’t expected to cry that day, but she didn’t feel bad about it either. “I just did the best I could, and I knew that it’s safe to be expressive and truthful with that particular group. I didn’t need to act and put on, like, a brave face,” she said. After all, she’d been honest all year long about how the pandemic was affecting her, in hopes that students would feel comfortable \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58663/pediatricians-say-the-mental-health-crisis-among-kids-has-become-a-national-emergency\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">doing the same\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jennings said it’s true that being emotionally vulnerable can give students permission to feel their own emotions. That was the case for Allison Gertler, a junior in Calote’s theater class last spring. She said she was angry at how the district’s sudden change in plans disrupted their show, and she was glad Calote didn’t try to shrug it off. “I feel like so much of school has this almost fake positivity energy. But when we come in this class, it’s actually, you know, it’s real.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In addition to giving students \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57992/the-importance-of-mourning-losses-even-when-they-seem-small\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">permission to feel\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Jennings said that teachers can use their own stressors to model how to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57002/how-mindfulness-during-class-can-help-students-and-teachers\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">recognize and respond to those emotions\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. For instance, if a teacher is feeling frustrated — “which happens a lot” — they can narrate their observations and responses: “Oh, I’m noticing how frustrated I’m feeling. My shoulders are getting tense. My jaw is getting tense. I’m feeling hot. I need to take some breaths and calm myself down.” These teaching moments can provide real examples to complement more structured \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56268/how-learning-emotional-skills-can-help-boys-become-men\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">social emotional learning activities\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in schools.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch1>\u003cb>Building social connections\u003c/b>\u003c/h1>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are other ways that a teacher being emotionally vulnerable can positively impact students, too. Jennings said it can be “an exercise in perspective-taking” and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58638/listening-to-learn-why-ear-hustle-stories-about-prison-life-is-so-engaging-to-students\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">foster empathy\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Take Bailey Venzon as an example. She was a senior last spring, and she said that seeing Calote cry was “a wake up call that the students aren’t the only ones that are having a hard time.” It made her appreciate how teachers “learned to do everything virtually just so they can teach us new things.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sharing feelings also builds social connections, according to Jennings. “And students feeling connected to their teachers, we know from lots of research, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54878/how-strengthening-relationships-with-boys-can-help-them-learn\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">helps kids\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Venzon said she and her peers already felt connected to Calote because they knew she was an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58487/how-parents-can-have-conversations-that-motivate-teens\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">empathetic listener\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: “She’s kind of like the airbags where she just stops you before hitting your head on the wheel.” But being on the other side strengthened the bond. “Since Calote has always been here for us, having her open up to us was kind of like she was saying that she trusts us.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC9181391206\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After Clue was cancelled, Calote’s students spent the remainder of the school year on independent creative projects, such as choreographing a ballet number or designing character makeup. While they didn’t have a stage or Zoom show to look back on, Calote saw those \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57241/six-ways-to-build-community-in-online-classrooms\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">connections they forged\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in the year’s highs and lows as their collective achievement. “Everybody had their moments of darkness and their weeks that were terrible, and we lifted each other up during those times. I’m proud of that,” she said at the end of the year.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For her own creative project, Calote \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/RanchoBackstage/status/1402495170134700032\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">wrote a farewell song\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for the seniors. The lyrics called out some of their shared memories, cheered their next steps and reminded them that “if you ever need support, you know, you’re always welcome here.” During their last class, Calote performed the song on her ukelele — just another medium for being emotionally open with students.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The MindShift team thanks \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/6576424/steve-drummond\">Steve Drummond\u003c/a> for editorial guidance on this story. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "‘This is not inclusive.’ Some students with disabilities are going without as districts scale back virtual programs",
"title": "‘This is not inclusive.’ Some students with disabilities are going without as districts scale back virtual programs",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ctime>Oct 14, 4:46pm EDT\u003c/time>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the new school year approached, Susan Graham wanted to know: Would her California school district have a remote learning option for her fifth grader?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State lawmakers put \u003ca href=\"https://edsource.org/2021/california-directs-districts-to-offer-remote-independent-study-this-fall/657578\">strict limits\u003c/a> on virtual learning this year, so her son’s district wasn’t offering daily classes over Zoom anymore. Instead, the district had an “independent study” program. Graham hoped it could work as a stopgap until her 10-year-old, who has Down syndrome and a respiratory condition, could be vaccinated against COVID.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a virtual town hall about the remote program, though, she was told it was a “general education” program only. If her son enrolled, he would lose access to modified lessons, speech therapy, and occupational therapy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was pretty stunned,” Graham said. “This is not inclusive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School districts don’t have to offer virtual learning this year, and most have \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/9/2/22654905/virtual-school-option-standalone-interest-dips\">scaled back their virtual offerings\u003c/a> to encourage students to return to in-person school. But where virtual school is available, some students with disabilities are finding it’s closed to them — or they are being asked to \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-27/independent-study-california-lausd\">give up certain kinds of support\u003c/a> to enroll.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s left families, advocates, lawyers, and school districts disagreeing on a key question: With schools open nationwide, what exactly must districts provide online?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federal officials have stressed the importance of in-person learning for students with disabilities, many of whom have \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2020/10/22/21529431/students-with-disabilities-return-to-schools-more-learning-and-needed-services-not-normal-yet\">struggled to learn online\u003c/a> while trading hands-on services for virtual stand-ins. “The best thing we could do for students with disabilities is the same thing we can do for all students — get them back in the classroom,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona \u003ca href=\"https://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/school-reopening-during-covid-19-supporting-students-educators-and-families\">said at a Senate hearing\u003c/a> last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a lengthy \u003ca href=\"https://sites.ed.gov/idea/idea-files/return-to-school-roadmap-development-and-implementation-of-ieps/#_Toc83713882,citem_53a6-0311\">guidance document\u003c/a>, the federal education department recently told districts that if they open a virtual program to all students, the district “must ensure that a child with a disability whose needs can be met through virtual learning” receives all of the services they’re legally entitled to. That leaves districts with some discretion to decide who those students are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But across the country, lawyers say districts are inappropriately excluding students and saying their needs cannot be met online, including many students who received special education services virtually last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Maryland attorney recently filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education after Baltimore County schools denied a third grader with Down syndrome access to the district’s virtual school. In California, attorneys \u003ca href=\"https://www.disabilityrightsca.org/press-release/complaint-filed-on-behalf-of-students-with-disabilities-for-discrimination-from-new\">filed a complaint\u003c/a> with the U.S. Department of Justice and a federal lawsuit over instances in which students with disabilities, including Graham’s son, were denied access to independent study programs or were told they’d have to give up their services to enroll.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If a district declines to modify lessons or add staff to make a virtual program work for all, “That’s a choice,” said Leslie Seid Margolis, the managing attorney at Disability Rights Maryland, who is representing several families who were told their children with disabilities couldn’t be served in virtual programs this year. “And it’s a choice that has a discriminatory impact on kids who may need those supplementary aids and services.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School officials, for their part, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2021/09/special-education/\">are wary\u003c/a> of letting students with disabilities attend virtual programs that they believe will be inferior to in-person school or that they can’t staff appropriately while also serving students in person. \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/9/23/22689774/teacher-vacancies-shortages-covid\">Special education teachers\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.bridgemi.com/talent-education/michigan-schools-cant-fill-teacher-aide-jobs-there-are-no-applicants\">paraprofessionals\u003c/a> have been among the hardest positions for schools to fill this school year, adding to the challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Detroit, for example, offered a virtual program that includes live instruction to any student who wanted to learn online this year. But the district turned down some students with disabilities who had needs the district didn’t think it could meet in the virtual school. Many who were denied entry previously attended centers that offer specialized support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We did not want to violate IEPs,” Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said in a statement, referring to the plans that spell out a student’s accommodations and services. “Some children’s needs, whether it be instructional or physical, cannot be met through virtual learning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Philadelphia \u003ca href=\"https://philadelphia.chalkbeat.org/2021/8/11/22620931/heres-what-we-know-about-philadelphias-remote-school-option\">expanded its virtual school\u003c/a> to every grade except pre-kindergarten this year, and \u003ca href=\"https://pva.philasd.org/ktofiveintakeform/#PVAFAQ\">the district says\u003c/a> the virtual school does offer certain services, like speech therapy, and employs special education teachers who can modify lessons. Some virtual students can receive specialized services through an outside agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Anna Perng, who advocates for Philadelphia students through the Chinatown Disability Advocacy Project, said when she attended a meeting with a family seeking to enroll their child in the district’s virtual school, the family’s request for their child’s usual one-on-one aide was turned down. In an email, spokesperson Marissa Orbanek said that if the district determines that a student’s needs can’t be met virtually, the available option is to attend “in-person, in the currently assigned school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students who’ve been admitted to virtual programs expecting to receive extra help from teachers and paraprofessionals have gone without that support, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure>\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22926587/National_20211014_DETOnlineLearning_Di_AmondMoore_003.JPG\">Di’Amond Moore / Detroit Free Press\u003cfigcaption>Students like 12-year-old Tyliya Wilson in Detroit are still waiting to receive their required services virtually.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Twelve-year-old Tyliya Wilson is supposed to get five hours of extra help each week with a teacher, according to her learning plan. Last year, she met with a teacher every day over video chat, and the teacher would pop into Tyliya’s other virtual classes to check on her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But over the last five weeks in Detroit’s virtual school, Tyliya has seen such a teacher just a handful of times to get help retaking a test.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind of hard, like when I need some help with my work,” Tyliya said. “Sometimes I ask my teachers, but it’s a bunch of kids in my class so they can’t help all the students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Detroit officials told her mother, Aliya Moore, that they intend to provide her daughter’s services, emails show, but Moore was told it won’t be until November that Tyliya will receive extra time with a teacher. The district struggled to \u003ca href=\"https://detroit.chalkbeat.org/2021/9/29/22701319/first-month-of-classes-in-detroit-sees-virtual-school-challenges-demand-for-hourly-employees\">adequately staff the virtual school\u003c/a>, Moore was told, after more students enrolled than were expected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Maria Juarez enrolled her 10-year-old in her Texas district’s virtual program, she was initially told that her daughter would receive her services after school. Her fifth grader has an emotional disability and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and is entitled to extra help from a teacher and visual charts to help with math skills like subtraction and division.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But so far, she’s gotten none of that. Juarez says she was later told her daughter’s needs are too complex for the virtual program. (Her district, Arlington Independent schools, did not respond to a request for comment.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I am just so lost right now because she needs the help,” Juarez said. “Whether you’re virtual or you’re in class, you should be offered the same education.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some say the continued demand for virtual learning was foreseeable, especially since some students with disabilities have medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to COVID and there is no vaccine for children under 12 yet. On top of that, school districts received extra \u003ca href=\"https://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/leg/arp/index.html\">COVID relief funding\u003c/a> specifically to help students with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t understand how after 18 months of this, that schools were not better prepared to offer virtual options to students with disabilities,” said Selene Almazan, the legal director at the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. “I really don’t.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some families who were told their district’s virtual option wasn’t a good match for their child’s needs \u003ca href=\"https://co.chalkbeat.org/2021/9/3/22656415/denver-virtual-school-students-with-disabilities\">have been directed\u003c/a> to \u003ca href=\"https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/education/2021/07/23/ese-students-struggling-find-virtual-options-could-violate-their-rights/7769465002/\">home and hospital instruction\u003c/a>, programs typically reserved for students with a short-term medical condition. These programs offer \u003ca href=\"https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2021/sep/26/few-school-options-kids-disabilities-during-c/554879/?bcsubid=9ecb0787-4dfd-4f92-9dda-6fc4e2506c32&pbdialog=reg-wall-login-created-tfp\">significantly less instruction\u003c/a> than a regular school day and usually don’t provide interaction with peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure>\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22926585/National_20211014_DETOnlineLearning_Di_AmondMoore_001.JPG\">Di’Amond Moore / Detroit Free Press\u003cfigcaption>Tyliya Wilson’s mother gives her extra work for times when teachers have been missing from her virtual classes.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Allegra and Arik Marcell’s 9-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, went a month without school after Baltimore County schools told the family the district’s virtual program wasn’t a fit for their son’s needs. Recently, their son has been meeting with a virtual tutor for about eight hours a week through the district’s home and hospital program, and he’s started receiving virtual speech and occupational therapy, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the Marcells worry their son is falling behind, as he’s often given assignments below his grade level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The third grader has an active imagination, but without classmates, he’s spending a lot of time in his own private world. “He’s extremely isolated,” Arik Marcell said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Charles Herndon, a spokesperson for Baltimore County schools, said the district doesn’t comment on cases involving specific students or families due to privacy concerns. The county’s virtual learning program is open to students with disabilities, he said in a statement, but it’s up to the team that works on the student’s learning plan to decide whether that’s an appropriate placement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For students who’ve been shut out of both virtual and home and hospital programs, there are few other remote options.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California, Graham hired a private tutor to work a few hours a week with her son, after deciding not to give up his services to enroll in their district’s independent study and being denied home and hospital services. Now she’s waiting for the legal process to play out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, she’s worried her son is missing out on lessons that would help him write independently and refine his motor skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He’s not progressing,” she said. “Trying to step in and do those specialty things — my toolbox is very limited.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was updated to include a response from Baltimore County schools.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg src=\"http://www.itjon.com/phppt/pixel.php?a=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.chalkbeat.org%2F2021%2F10%2F14%2F22726271%2Fstudents-with-disabilities-denied-virtual-special-education\" alt=\"\">\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ctime>Oct 14, 4:46pm EDT\u003c/time>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the new school year approached, Susan Graham wanted to know: Would her California school district have a remote learning option for her fifth grader?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State lawmakers put \u003ca href=\"https://edsource.org/2021/california-directs-districts-to-offer-remote-independent-study-this-fall/657578\">strict limits\u003c/a> on virtual learning this year, so her son’s district wasn’t offering daily classes over Zoom anymore. Instead, the district had an “independent study” program. Graham hoped it could work as a stopgap until her 10-year-old, who has Down syndrome and a respiratory condition, could be vaccinated against COVID.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a virtual town hall about the remote program, though, she was told it was a “general education” program only. If her son enrolled, he would lose access to modified lessons, speech therapy, and occupational therapy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was pretty stunned,” Graham said. “This is not inclusive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School districts don’t have to offer virtual learning this year, and most have \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/9/2/22654905/virtual-school-option-standalone-interest-dips\">scaled back their virtual offerings\u003c/a> to encourage students to return to in-person school. But where virtual school is available, some students with disabilities are finding it’s closed to them — or they are being asked to \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-27/independent-study-california-lausd\">give up certain kinds of support\u003c/a> to enroll.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s left families, advocates, lawyers, and school districts disagreeing on a key question: With schools open nationwide, what exactly must districts provide online?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federal officials have stressed the importance of in-person learning for students with disabilities, many of whom have \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2020/10/22/21529431/students-with-disabilities-return-to-schools-more-learning-and-needed-services-not-normal-yet\">struggled to learn online\u003c/a> while trading hands-on services for virtual stand-ins. “The best thing we could do for students with disabilities is the same thing we can do for all students — get them back in the classroom,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona \u003ca href=\"https://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/school-reopening-during-covid-19-supporting-students-educators-and-families\">said at a Senate hearing\u003c/a> last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a lengthy \u003ca href=\"https://sites.ed.gov/idea/idea-files/return-to-school-roadmap-development-and-implementation-of-ieps/#_Toc83713882,citem_53a6-0311\">guidance document\u003c/a>, the federal education department recently told districts that if they open a virtual program to all students, the district “must ensure that a child with a disability whose needs can be met through virtual learning” receives all of the services they’re legally entitled to. That leaves districts with some discretion to decide who those students are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But across the country, lawyers say districts are inappropriately excluding students and saying their needs cannot be met online, including many students who received special education services virtually last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Maryland attorney recently filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education after Baltimore County schools denied a third grader with Down syndrome access to the district’s virtual school. In California, attorneys \u003ca href=\"https://www.disabilityrightsca.org/press-release/complaint-filed-on-behalf-of-students-with-disabilities-for-discrimination-from-new\">filed a complaint\u003c/a> with the U.S. Department of Justice and a federal lawsuit over instances in which students with disabilities, including Graham’s son, were denied access to independent study programs or were told they’d have to give up their services to enroll.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If a district declines to modify lessons or add staff to make a virtual program work for all, “That’s a choice,” said Leslie Seid Margolis, the managing attorney at Disability Rights Maryland, who is representing several families who were told their children with disabilities couldn’t be served in virtual programs this year. “And it’s a choice that has a discriminatory impact on kids who may need those supplementary aids and services.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School officials, for their part, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2021/09/special-education/\">are wary\u003c/a> of letting students with disabilities attend virtual programs that they believe will be inferior to in-person school or that they can’t staff appropriately while also serving students in person. \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/9/23/22689774/teacher-vacancies-shortages-covid\">Special education teachers\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.bridgemi.com/talent-education/michigan-schools-cant-fill-teacher-aide-jobs-there-are-no-applicants\">paraprofessionals\u003c/a> have been among the hardest positions for schools to fill this school year, adding to the challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Detroit, for example, offered a virtual program that includes live instruction to any student who wanted to learn online this year. But the district turned down some students with disabilities who had needs the district didn’t think it could meet in the virtual school. Many who were denied entry previously attended centers that offer specialized support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We did not want to violate IEPs,” Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said in a statement, referring to the plans that spell out a student’s accommodations and services. “Some children’s needs, whether it be instructional or physical, cannot be met through virtual learning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Philadelphia \u003ca href=\"https://philadelphia.chalkbeat.org/2021/8/11/22620931/heres-what-we-know-about-philadelphias-remote-school-option\">expanded its virtual school\u003c/a> to every grade except pre-kindergarten this year, and \u003ca href=\"https://pva.philasd.org/ktofiveintakeform/#PVAFAQ\">the district says\u003c/a> the virtual school does offer certain services, like speech therapy, and employs special education teachers who can modify lessons. Some virtual students can receive specialized services through an outside agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Anna Perng, who advocates for Philadelphia students through the Chinatown Disability Advocacy Project, said when she attended a meeting with a family seeking to enroll their child in the district’s virtual school, the family’s request for their child’s usual one-on-one aide was turned down. In an email, spokesperson Marissa Orbanek said that if the district determines that a student’s needs can’t be met virtually, the available option is to attend “in-person, in the currently assigned school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students who’ve been admitted to virtual programs expecting to receive extra help from teachers and paraprofessionals have gone without that support, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure>\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22926587/National_20211014_DETOnlineLearning_Di_AmondMoore_003.JPG\">Di’Amond Moore / Detroit Free Press\u003cfigcaption>Students like 12-year-old Tyliya Wilson in Detroit are still waiting to receive their required services virtually.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Twelve-year-old Tyliya Wilson is supposed to get five hours of extra help each week with a teacher, according to her learning plan. Last year, she met with a teacher every day over video chat, and the teacher would pop into Tyliya’s other virtual classes to check on her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But over the last five weeks in Detroit’s virtual school, Tyliya has seen such a teacher just a handful of times to get help retaking a test.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind of hard, like when I need some help with my work,” Tyliya said. “Sometimes I ask my teachers, but it’s a bunch of kids in my class so they can’t help all the students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Detroit officials told her mother, Aliya Moore, that they intend to provide her daughter’s services, emails show, but Moore was told it won’t be until November that Tyliya will receive extra time with a teacher. The district struggled to \u003ca href=\"https://detroit.chalkbeat.org/2021/9/29/22701319/first-month-of-classes-in-detroit-sees-virtual-school-challenges-demand-for-hourly-employees\">adequately staff the virtual school\u003c/a>, Moore was told, after more students enrolled than were expected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Maria Juarez enrolled her 10-year-old in her Texas district’s virtual program, she was initially told that her daughter would receive her services after school. Her fifth grader has an emotional disability and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and is entitled to extra help from a teacher and visual charts to help with math skills like subtraction and division.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But so far, she’s gotten none of that. Juarez says she was later told her daughter’s needs are too complex for the virtual program. (Her district, Arlington Independent schools, did not respond to a request for comment.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I am just so lost right now because she needs the help,” Juarez said. “Whether you’re virtual or you’re in class, you should be offered the same education.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some say the continued demand for virtual learning was foreseeable, especially since some students with disabilities have medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to COVID and there is no vaccine for children under 12 yet. On top of that, school districts received extra \u003ca href=\"https://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/leg/arp/index.html\">COVID relief funding\u003c/a> specifically to help students with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t understand how after 18 months of this, that schools were not better prepared to offer virtual options to students with disabilities,” said Selene Almazan, the legal director at the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. “I really don’t.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some families who were told their district’s virtual option wasn’t a good match for their child’s needs \u003ca href=\"https://co.chalkbeat.org/2021/9/3/22656415/denver-virtual-school-students-with-disabilities\">have been directed\u003c/a> to \u003ca href=\"https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/education/2021/07/23/ese-students-struggling-find-virtual-options-could-violate-their-rights/7769465002/\">home and hospital instruction\u003c/a>, programs typically reserved for students with a short-term medical condition. These programs offer \u003ca href=\"https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2021/sep/26/few-school-options-kids-disabilities-during-c/554879/?bcsubid=9ecb0787-4dfd-4f92-9dda-6fc4e2506c32&pbdialog=reg-wall-login-created-tfp\">significantly less instruction\u003c/a> than a regular school day and usually don’t provide interaction with peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure>\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22926585/National_20211014_DETOnlineLearning_Di_AmondMoore_001.JPG\">Di’Amond Moore / Detroit Free Press\u003cfigcaption>Tyliya Wilson’s mother gives her extra work for times when teachers have been missing from her virtual classes.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Allegra and Arik Marcell’s 9-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, went a month without school after Baltimore County schools told the family the district’s virtual program wasn’t a fit for their son’s needs. Recently, their son has been meeting with a virtual tutor for about eight hours a week through the district’s home and hospital program, and he’s started receiving virtual speech and occupational therapy, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the Marcells worry their son is falling behind, as he’s often given assignments below his grade level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The third grader has an active imagination, but without classmates, he’s spending a lot of time in his own private world. “He’s extremely isolated,” Arik Marcell said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Charles Herndon, a spokesperson for Baltimore County schools, said the district doesn’t comment on cases involving specific students or families due to privacy concerns. The county’s virtual learning program is open to students with disabilities, he said in a statement, but it’s up to the team that works on the student’s learning plan to decide whether that’s an appropriate placement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For students who’ve been shut out of both virtual and home and hospital programs, there are few other remote options.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California, Graham hired a private tutor to work a few hours a week with her son, after deciding not to give up his services to enroll in their district’s independent study and being denied home and hospital services. Now she’s waiting for the legal process to play out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, she’s worried her son is missing out on lessons that would help him write independently and refine his motor skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He’s not progressing,” she said. “Trying to step in and do those specialty things — my toolbox is very limited.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was updated to include a response from Baltimore County schools.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/how-minecraft-youtubers-made-me-a-better-parent-during-the-pandemic/\">\u003cem>The Dream SMP\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://eepurl.com/c36ixT\">\u003cem>Hechinger’s newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in the spring of 2020, before my tween daughters became obsessed with Minecraft YouTube, I thought I had pandemic parenting figured out. Their teachers were struggling to put together half-days of online instruction, so I filled the void with “Dad School,” folding my children into a world full of all my favorite things. We made family dinners. We built a fort in the woods. I even let my girls stay up late to watch “The Last Dance,” the documentary series about Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, so I could show them one of my childhood heroes and they could dye my hair just like Dennis Rodman’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The high point of this period was a weeks-long Dungeons & Dragons quest. My heart nearly burst when my girls fell in love with the role-playing narrative adventure game I had once enjoyed so much. My older daughter, 10 years old at the time, with new glasses and a growing collection of high-waisted jeans, spent hours crafting an elaborate back story for her character, a moon-elf sorcerer named Glory who was intensely loyal to her friends and harbored a blind hatred of injustice. My younger daughter, 8, and still all elbows and knees, helped me concoct fantastical adventures, forcing her sister’s alter-ego to choose between risking death to save injured goblins or playing it safe to protect her fellow adventures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This lasted until June. Then extended quarantine started to pull us in separate directions. For my daughters, stuck at home with their parents and still detached from their social lives, time started to spin faster, shredding their remaining days of childhood. But for me, middle-aged and increasingly exhausted, time slowed to a crawl, turning each day into trench warfare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Dad,” my 10-year-old asked one evening as I confronted the dishes, “speaking as a Boomer, is it harder to make friends as you get older?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Actually, I said, I’m Gen X. And yes. Yes, it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recognizing our kids’ growing social isolation, my wife and I tried to compensate by adopting a puppy. We also bought an Xbox, so they could join their friends for online Minecraft, the hugely popular video game that lets users explore vast digital realms and use animated 3-D blocks to build whatever they can imagine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is still OK, I remember thinking. Sure, my kids will be in front of screens more. But Minecraft is rich with opportunities for collaboration and creative problem-solving and all the other good stuff experts encourage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a Saturday evening in late August when my illusions finally shattered. Instead of creating their own Minecraft worlds, my daughters were starting to spend hours watching other people play the game on YouTube. I tried to take advantage of their new habit, cleaning the house and chasing the puppy and catching up on overdue work. By 8:30 p.m., I was beat, so I scavenged cold leftovers in the kitchen, then crumpled into the sofa and turned the TV to an NBA playoff game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenty minutes later, my 10-year-old wandered into the room, bleary-eyed and hungry. I had lost track of her, and she had lost track of time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s almost 9 o’clock,” she said. “Are we going to have dinner?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Making ‘The Dream SMP’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The YouTube content that came to consume my daughters’ attention was called “The Dream SMP.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “Dream’” part refers to the username of a popular online gamer. According to his Wikitubia fan page, Dream is a 21-year-old former AppleCare worker from Orlando, Florida. He has yet to publicly reveal his face or full name, creating instead an online identity around a white blob with a smiley face. He did not respond to my requests for an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“SMP,” meanwhile, is shorthand for “survival multiplayer.” This refers to the private Minecraft server that Dream launched in April 2020 so he and a few gamer friends could explore a new update to the game. Starting in July 2020, however, dozens of other prominent Minecraft YouTubers with usernames like Quackity and Technoblade and CaptainPuffy began joining in, turning The Dream SMP into a sprawling collaborative experiment. By late 2020, gameplay on the server was being guided by “Hamilton”-inspired narrative storylines and loosely sketched character arcs, with more than 30 players taking part in improvised role-plays that were streamed on multiple Twitch and YouTube channels, allowing millions of kids like mine to follow along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was the Minecraft equivalent of Marvel Studios’ superhero-filled cinematic universe. My whole body sagged with age when my older daughter first tried to explain it to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So basically, there’s an evil egg on the server, and it like infests everything, making you evil and power-hungry, and it kind of like whispers you things inside your head. And then there’s like a whole faction, the Eggpire, and they held a Red Banquet, which was supposed to be like, ‘Oh, we come in peace,’ but then really they were actually gonna kill everybody,” she told me one evening in the kitchen while I chopped peppers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I grimaced and nodded along, trying not to slice my fingers as I fought to keep the puppy from eating the placemats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Related: \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/screen-time-isnt-created-equally/\">\u003cstrong>Why all screen time isn’t created equally\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the one hand, my children’s fascination with The Dream SMP was a relief. They certainly seemed to enjoy it more than the family viewings of “Stranger Things” I had arranged in a failed attempt to reclaim their focus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, however, The Dream SMP also gave me plenty of reason to worry. When I came downstairs, my girls would immediately pause whatever video they were watching, setting off my dad alarm. When I insisted that they let me watch along, I saw a pale-skinned, mop-haired British teenager who seemed to communicate mostly via screams, braying laughs, and random phrases he seemed to feel obliged to repeat at least four times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Dude, I’ve never been that close to weeing myself on stream,” was one of the few complete sentences I caught through the din.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This, I learned, was Thomas “TommyInnit” Simons, a hyperactive chaos agent who liked to burn down other players’ Minecraft houses and was in hot online water after sharing his platform with another gamer who had a history of uttering transphobic slurs. My daughters seemed captivated by his incessant trolling, filling my head with panicked visions of once-sweet children being transformed into obnoxious adolescent QAnon adherents who railed against cancel culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When confronted with such moments, experts urge parents to play the long game, creating a safe space for open communication by asking lots of open-ended questions and offering non-judgmental statements of our own values.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you’re able to make them feel like you truly care about their interests, you’re setting the stage for a future of important conversations,” said Yalda T. Uhls, who studies the ways media influences children’s development for the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at the University of California, Los Angeles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the moment, of course, I fell well short of this advice, fixating instead on my own fears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So, do you have a crush on this Tommy guy?” I asked my older daughter, by then 11 years old and attending a new school where she’d never met her teachers or most of her classmates in person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ugh,” she responded, storming out of the room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘A very beautiful ecology’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The YouTube content that finally brought my family together featured two of the biggest stars on The Dream SMP: Dream and George “GeorgeNotFound” Davidson, a 24-year-old gamer from Britain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The video started with the duo explaining how they hacked an electronic dog collar, using computer code and a pocket-sized microcontroller to reprogram the device to deliver electric shocks each time the wearer’s Minecraft character took damage during gameplay. From there, the tension slowly mounted, reaching a crescendo when GeorgeNotFound got zapped in the arm and started howling wildly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a few glorious minutes, I felt young again, transported back to the hours I used to spend watching ‘Jackass’ reruns and recording dumb skits on cassette tapes with my brothers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Look, Dad is actually laughing!” my younger daughter told her sister in amazement. “Usually, he only laughs at his own jokes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was then that I decided to make more of an effort to see The Dream SMP through my girls’ eyes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Related: \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-paper-beats-pixels-on-most-picture-books-research-finds/\">\u003cstrong>Paper beats pixels on most picture books, research finds\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of what they found so appealing, it turned out, were the storylines, full of revolution and betrayal and shifting alliances. They also loved the characters, none of whom is entirely good or always bad. And they took great pleasure in digging through the multi-layered identities of all the players in The Dream SMP, each of whom is simultaneously an actual human being and a crafted online persona and a character being role-played for dramatic effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, I came to realize, my children’s new online world was very much like the fourth and fifth grade classrooms they were missing out on as remote learning sucked the life out of their 2020-21 school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not that I didn’t like ‘Stranger Things,’” my older daughter eventually confessed. “But I love the chaotic-ness of The Dream SMP. It feels more realistic. There’s always multiple stories going on, and you have to consider multiple people’s points of view.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By that point, Dad School was a distant memory, and my girls had started describing themselves as members of the “The Dream SMP community.” They spent hours online, searching out the digital artwork and fiction created by the other young fans with whom they now shared a connection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a very beautiful ecology,” said Crystal Abidin, an associate professor of Internet Studies at Australia’s Curtin University. “By creating their own version of these fictive worlds, young people are taking spaces like Minecraft and making them their own.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inspired, I decided to join my kids in exploring the Dream SMP universe. I quickly developed a fondness for fan art featuring a participant named BadBoyHalo, YouTube-famous for saying “muffins” instead of curse words during his streams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of my favorite images featured a grinning boy and a smiling puppy, both holding fresh-baked muffins against a backdrop of multi-colored hearts. I texted it to my older daughter, saying that I too now thought some parts of The Dream SMP were pretty awesome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Dang ur on a roll that ones cool,” she quickly texted back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>From Friday movie night to Friday YouTube night\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although Dream wouldn’t discuss the phenomenal popularity of his Minecraft server with me, he did join YouTube interviewer Anthony Padilla for an \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WAkPJ6654o\">online conversation\u003c/a> this June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By that point, he had amassed nearly 22 million YouTube subscribers, but ceded significant control of his Minecraft server to his fellow participants. As a result, TommyInnit’s videos had collectively been viewed nearly a billion times, while other players were adding hundreds of thousands of new followers a month and launching fresh YouTube channels for their other creative endeavors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m honestly not that surprised,” Dream said. “When I go through and add somebody to the SMP, I don’t want them to just be successful in the SMP. I want them to take that and be successful [elsewhere].”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ironically, experts recommend that parents try to empower their children in similar ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Your job is to teach your kids how to get through their digital adolescence by managing themselves, so they can do the things they want to do online with grace,” said Amanda Lenhart, who studies technology’s impact on families for the Data & Society, a nonprofit research organization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Related: \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/a-drastic-experiment-in-progress-how-will-coronavirus-change-our-kids/\">\u003cstrong>What are the effects of social isolation from coronavirus on kids?\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That perspective reflects a growing consensus that guardrails around children’s screen time should take circumstance into account, while focusing more on quality than quantity. When the pandemic era is viewed through that lens, Lenhart said, it actually seems pretty great that many kids responded to a time of severe social isolation by going online in search of communities and stories that could help them make sense of the world and themselves. That’s an important lesson that adults can carry forward, even as the pandemic eases and many children return to in-person school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Things like The Dream SMP should expand our ideas of what is art and what makes for good narrative and where opportunities for creative expression now show up in our children’s lives,” Lenhart said. “It’s no longer just in the books they get from the library.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be sure, Minecraft YouTube still gives me plenty of reason for concern. I’m not thrilled with all the penis jokes. I worry about the growing subsection of Dream fans linked to toxic and threatening online behavior. YouTube’s algorithm, which feeds users an unrelenting tsunami of related content, constantly overwhelms whatever bandwidth busy parents like me have to monitor what our children are doing online, a problem the platform’s parental controls have yet to adequately solve.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The amazing thing, though, was that once I started trusting my children, they started to bring such issues to my attention on their own. My daughters wanted to know what my wife and I thought. Even better, they wanted us to know what they thought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the 2020-21 school year came to a close, my children suggested that maybe we could swap out Friday movie night for Friday YouTube night. I pouted a little at the prospect of changing a cherished family ritual, but quickly caught myself. My girls promptly rewarded my progress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They started the evening by showing a recap of the first few months of The Dream SMP, made by fans who blew me away by painstakingly recreating the entire Minecraft world on their own server. Then my girls played streams from some of the seminal events in The Dream SMP storyline, including a full-on role-played political debate between the server’s competing political parties, SWAG2020 and POG2020. Our watch party closed with a heartbreakingly beautiful animation created by digital artist SAD-ist, who according to Wikitubia is an 18-year-old fan from the Philippines who splices together dialogue from Dream SMP streams with her own drawings and music by the German composers 2WEI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The high point was a dramatic recreation of the scene that led to The Dream SMP’s most famous one-liner, since meme-ified by millions of fans like my daughters and me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was never meant to be,” we yelled along when the big moment came.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we finally turned the Xbox off, it felt like we had reached an important new milestone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Girls, thank you so much for showing me all this,” I said. “I’m sorry I can be such a difficult student.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s OK,” my children agreed. “It’s fun trying to teach you about the things we like.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/how-minecraft-youtubers-made-me-a-better-parent-during-the-pandemic/\">\u003cem>The Dream SMP\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>,\u003cem> a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://eepurl.com/c36ixT\">\u003cem>Hechinger’s newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/how-minecraft-youtubers-made-me-a-better-parent-during-the-pandemic/\">\u003cem>The Dream SMP\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://eepurl.com/c36ixT\">\u003cem>Hechinger’s newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in the spring of 2020, before my tween daughters became obsessed with Minecraft YouTube, I thought I had pandemic parenting figured out. Their teachers were struggling to put together half-days of online instruction, so I filled the void with “Dad School,” folding my children into a world full of all my favorite things. We made family dinners. We built a fort in the woods. I even let my girls stay up late to watch “The Last Dance,” the documentary series about Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, so I could show them one of my childhood heroes and they could dye my hair just like Dennis Rodman’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The high point of this period was a weeks-long Dungeons & Dragons quest. My heart nearly burst when my girls fell in love with the role-playing narrative adventure game I had once enjoyed so much. My older daughter, 10 years old at the time, with new glasses and a growing collection of high-waisted jeans, spent hours crafting an elaborate back story for her character, a moon-elf sorcerer named Glory who was intensely loyal to her friends and harbored a blind hatred of injustice. My younger daughter, 8, and still all elbows and knees, helped me concoct fantastical adventures, forcing her sister’s alter-ego to choose between risking death to save injured goblins or playing it safe to protect her fellow adventures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This lasted until June. Then extended quarantine started to pull us in separate directions. For my daughters, stuck at home with their parents and still detached from their social lives, time started to spin faster, shredding their remaining days of childhood. But for me, middle-aged and increasingly exhausted, time slowed to a crawl, turning each day into trench warfare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Dad,” my 10-year-old asked one evening as I confronted the dishes, “speaking as a Boomer, is it harder to make friends as you get older?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Actually, I said, I’m Gen X. And yes. Yes, it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recognizing our kids’ growing social isolation, my wife and I tried to compensate by adopting a puppy. We also bought an Xbox, so they could join their friends for online Minecraft, the hugely popular video game that lets users explore vast digital realms and use animated 3-D blocks to build whatever they can imagine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is still OK, I remember thinking. Sure, my kids will be in front of screens more. But Minecraft is rich with opportunities for collaboration and creative problem-solving and all the other good stuff experts encourage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a Saturday evening in late August when my illusions finally shattered. Instead of creating their own Minecraft worlds, my daughters were starting to spend hours watching other people play the game on YouTube. I tried to take advantage of their new habit, cleaning the house and chasing the puppy and catching up on overdue work. By 8:30 p.m., I was beat, so I scavenged cold leftovers in the kitchen, then crumpled into the sofa and turned the TV to an NBA playoff game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenty minutes later, my 10-year-old wandered into the room, bleary-eyed and hungry. I had lost track of her, and she had lost track of time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s almost 9 o’clock,” she said. “Are we going to have dinner?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Making ‘The Dream SMP’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The YouTube content that came to consume my daughters’ attention was called “The Dream SMP.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “Dream’” part refers to the username of a popular online gamer. According to his Wikitubia fan page, Dream is a 21-year-old former AppleCare worker from Orlando, Florida. He has yet to publicly reveal his face or full name, creating instead an online identity around a white blob with a smiley face. He did not respond to my requests for an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“SMP,” meanwhile, is shorthand for “survival multiplayer.” This refers to the private Minecraft server that Dream launched in April 2020 so he and a few gamer friends could explore a new update to the game. Starting in July 2020, however, dozens of other prominent Minecraft YouTubers with usernames like Quackity and Technoblade and CaptainPuffy began joining in, turning The Dream SMP into a sprawling collaborative experiment. By late 2020, gameplay on the server was being guided by “Hamilton”-inspired narrative storylines and loosely sketched character arcs, with more than 30 players taking part in improvised role-plays that were streamed on multiple Twitch and YouTube channels, allowing millions of kids like mine to follow along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was the Minecraft equivalent of Marvel Studios’ superhero-filled cinematic universe. My whole body sagged with age when my older daughter first tried to explain it to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So basically, there’s an evil egg on the server, and it like infests everything, making you evil and power-hungry, and it kind of like whispers you things inside your head. And then there’s like a whole faction, the Eggpire, and they held a Red Banquet, which was supposed to be like, ‘Oh, we come in peace,’ but then really they were actually gonna kill everybody,” she told me one evening in the kitchen while I chopped peppers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I grimaced and nodded along, trying not to slice my fingers as I fought to keep the puppy from eating the placemats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Related: \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/screen-time-isnt-created-equally/\">\u003cstrong>Why all screen time isn’t created equally\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the one hand, my children’s fascination with The Dream SMP was a relief. They certainly seemed to enjoy it more than the family viewings of “Stranger Things” I had arranged in a failed attempt to reclaim their focus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, however, The Dream SMP also gave me plenty of reason to worry. When I came downstairs, my girls would immediately pause whatever video they were watching, setting off my dad alarm. When I insisted that they let me watch along, I saw a pale-skinned, mop-haired British teenager who seemed to communicate mostly via screams, braying laughs, and random phrases he seemed to feel obliged to repeat at least four times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Dude, I’ve never been that close to weeing myself on stream,” was one of the few complete sentences I caught through the din.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This, I learned, was Thomas “TommyInnit” Simons, a hyperactive chaos agent who liked to burn down other players’ Minecraft houses and was in hot online water after sharing his platform with another gamer who had a history of uttering transphobic slurs. My daughters seemed captivated by his incessant trolling, filling my head with panicked visions of once-sweet children being transformed into obnoxious adolescent QAnon adherents who railed against cancel culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When confronted with such moments, experts urge parents to play the long game, creating a safe space for open communication by asking lots of open-ended questions and offering non-judgmental statements of our own values.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you’re able to make them feel like you truly care about their interests, you’re setting the stage for a future of important conversations,” said Yalda T. Uhls, who studies the ways media influences children’s development for the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at the University of California, Los Angeles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the moment, of course, I fell well short of this advice, fixating instead on my own fears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So, do you have a crush on this Tommy guy?” I asked my older daughter, by then 11 years old and attending a new school where she’d never met her teachers or most of her classmates in person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ugh,” she responded, storming out of the room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘A very beautiful ecology’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The YouTube content that finally brought my family together featured two of the biggest stars on The Dream SMP: Dream and George “GeorgeNotFound” Davidson, a 24-year-old gamer from Britain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The video started with the duo explaining how they hacked an electronic dog collar, using computer code and a pocket-sized microcontroller to reprogram the device to deliver electric shocks each time the wearer’s Minecraft character took damage during gameplay. From there, the tension slowly mounted, reaching a crescendo when GeorgeNotFound got zapped in the arm and started howling wildly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a few glorious minutes, I felt young again, transported back to the hours I used to spend watching ‘Jackass’ reruns and recording dumb skits on cassette tapes with my brothers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Look, Dad is actually laughing!” my younger daughter told her sister in amazement. “Usually, he only laughs at his own jokes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was then that I decided to make more of an effort to see The Dream SMP through my girls’ eyes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Related: \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-paper-beats-pixels-on-most-picture-books-research-finds/\">\u003cstrong>Paper beats pixels on most picture books, research finds\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of what they found so appealing, it turned out, were the storylines, full of revolution and betrayal and shifting alliances. They also loved the characters, none of whom is entirely good or always bad. And they took great pleasure in digging through the multi-layered identities of all the players in The Dream SMP, each of whom is simultaneously an actual human being and a crafted online persona and a character being role-played for dramatic effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, I came to realize, my children’s new online world was very much like the fourth and fifth grade classrooms they were missing out on as remote learning sucked the life out of their 2020-21 school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not that I didn’t like ‘Stranger Things,’” my older daughter eventually confessed. “But I love the chaotic-ness of The Dream SMP. It feels more realistic. There’s always multiple stories going on, and you have to consider multiple people’s points of view.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By that point, Dad School was a distant memory, and my girls had started describing themselves as members of the “The Dream SMP community.” They spent hours online, searching out the digital artwork and fiction created by the other young fans with whom they now shared a connection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a very beautiful ecology,” said Crystal Abidin, an associate professor of Internet Studies at Australia’s Curtin University. “By creating their own version of these fictive worlds, young people are taking spaces like Minecraft and making them their own.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inspired, I decided to join my kids in exploring the Dream SMP universe. I quickly developed a fondness for fan art featuring a participant named BadBoyHalo, YouTube-famous for saying “muffins” instead of curse words during his streams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of my favorite images featured a grinning boy and a smiling puppy, both holding fresh-baked muffins against a backdrop of multi-colored hearts. I texted it to my older daughter, saying that I too now thought some parts of The Dream SMP were pretty awesome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Dang ur on a roll that ones cool,” she quickly texted back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>From Friday movie night to Friday YouTube night\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although Dream wouldn’t discuss the phenomenal popularity of his Minecraft server with me, he did join YouTube interviewer Anthony Padilla for an \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WAkPJ6654o\">online conversation\u003c/a> this June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By that point, he had amassed nearly 22 million YouTube subscribers, but ceded significant control of his Minecraft server to his fellow participants. As a result, TommyInnit’s videos had collectively been viewed nearly a billion times, while other players were adding hundreds of thousands of new followers a month and launching fresh YouTube channels for their other creative endeavors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m honestly not that surprised,” Dream said. “When I go through and add somebody to the SMP, I don’t want them to just be successful in the SMP. I want them to take that and be successful [elsewhere].”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ironically, experts recommend that parents try to empower their children in similar ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Your job is to teach your kids how to get through their digital adolescence by managing themselves, so they can do the things they want to do online with grace,” said Amanda Lenhart, who studies technology’s impact on families for the Data & Society, a nonprofit research organization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Related: \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/a-drastic-experiment-in-progress-how-will-coronavirus-change-our-kids/\">\u003cstrong>What are the effects of social isolation from coronavirus on kids?\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That perspective reflects a growing consensus that guardrails around children’s screen time should take circumstance into account, while focusing more on quality than quantity. When the pandemic era is viewed through that lens, Lenhart said, it actually seems pretty great that many kids responded to a time of severe social isolation by going online in search of communities and stories that could help them make sense of the world and themselves. That’s an important lesson that adults can carry forward, even as the pandemic eases and many children return to in-person school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Things like The Dream SMP should expand our ideas of what is art and what makes for good narrative and where opportunities for creative expression now show up in our children’s lives,” Lenhart said. “It’s no longer just in the books they get from the library.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be sure, Minecraft YouTube still gives me plenty of reason for concern. I’m not thrilled with all the penis jokes. I worry about the growing subsection of Dream fans linked to toxic and threatening online behavior. YouTube’s algorithm, which feeds users an unrelenting tsunami of related content, constantly overwhelms whatever bandwidth busy parents like me have to monitor what our children are doing online, a problem the platform’s parental controls have yet to adequately solve.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The amazing thing, though, was that once I started trusting my children, they started to bring such issues to my attention on their own. My daughters wanted to know what my wife and I thought. Even better, they wanted us to know what they thought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the 2020-21 school year came to a close, my children suggested that maybe we could swap out Friday movie night for Friday YouTube night. I pouted a little at the prospect of changing a cherished family ritual, but quickly caught myself. My girls promptly rewarded my progress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They started the evening by showing a recap of the first few months of The Dream SMP, made by fans who blew me away by painstakingly recreating the entire Minecraft world on their own server. Then my girls played streams from some of the seminal events in The Dream SMP storyline, including a full-on role-played political debate between the server’s competing political parties, SWAG2020 and POG2020. Our watch party closed with a heartbreakingly beautiful animation created by digital artist SAD-ist, who according to Wikitubia is an 18-year-old fan from the Philippines who splices together dialogue from Dream SMP streams with her own drawings and music by the German composers 2WEI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The high point was a dramatic recreation of the scene that led to The Dream SMP’s most famous one-liner, since meme-ified by millions of fans like my daughters and me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was never meant to be,” we yelled along when the big moment came.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we finally turned the Xbox off, it felt like we had reached an important new milestone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Girls, thank you so much for showing me all this,” I said. “I’m sorry I can be such a difficult student.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s OK,” my children agreed. “It’s fun trying to teach you about the things we like.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/how-minecraft-youtubers-made-me-a-better-parent-during-the-pandemic/\">\u003cem>The Dream SMP\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>,\u003cem> a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://eepurl.com/c36ixT\">\u003cem>Hechinger’s newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "How to Help Anxious Students Re-Adjust to Social Settings",
"headTitle": "How to Help Anxious Students Re-Adjust to Social Settings | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For the first three days of summer camp, Stephanie Lucianovic’s 8-year-old son arrived home with tear-streaked cheeks. The causes varied — a skinned knee, another child kicking sand on his water bottle and other small bumps in days filled with climbing trees and making clay art. “All valid, emotional things, but he was really very quick to tears those first couple of days,” said Lucianovic, who lives in Menlo Park, California. For most of the 2020-21 school year, her son attended second grade in a hybrid format, with alternating weeks of in-person and virtual classes. She attributed his summer camp reactions to emotions worn thin by the dealing with many changes since COVID-19 arrived in the spring of his first grade year.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/grubreport/status/1418620388406218752\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lucianovic’s observations echoed what camp directors noticed among many kids this season, according to Tom Rosenberg, President and CEO of the American Camp Association. One camp director called it “the summer of more,” he said, because they saw “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58263/at-summer-camp-more-anxiety-more-learning-more-hugs-same-fun\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">more joy, but also more anxiety\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, more amplified emotional distress, more, you know, challenges.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.muniyakhannaphd.com/drkhanna.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Muniya Khanna\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, strong emotional reactions and increased social discomfort are predictable responses as youngsters emerge from more than a year of isolation and altered routines caused by the pandemic. Khanna is a clinical psychologist in Pennsylvania who specializes in treatment of childhood anxiety. She explained that anxiety is part of the body’s fight-or-flight response to uncertainty. While in-person activities may be billed as a “return to normal,” Khanna said it also brings with it the uncertainties of social interactions with which children have been out of practice. As a result, she said, children’s bodies are “kind of primed to feel really more uncomfortable than ever before in going towards those things.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To ease the adjustment, Khanna and other experts recommended that parents and teachers \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57108/listen-and-connect-how-parents-can-support-teens-mental-health-right-now\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">listen\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and observe, help children shift their focus, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58274/safety-agency-connection-priorities-to-help-students-transition-back-to-school\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reestablish routines\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and communicate with each other. “This won’t be an ideal transition. But I do think if we kind of stick to those basics, that we’re going to get there,” said Khanna.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>What Parents Can Do\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For parents like Lucianovic, child psychiatrist \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://childmind.org/bio/michael-enenbach-md/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Michael Enenbach\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> recommends learning the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://childmind.org/article/what-are-the-signs-of-anxiety/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">signs of anxiety\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and simply paying attention. “Checking in every day, like, ‘How’s your anxiety? How’s your depression?’ can be a little bit much for a kid,” said Enenbach, who is clinical director and associate medical director at the Child Mind Institute. “So it’s about observing their behaviors, observing what they’re struggling with and then sort of having an open-ended conversation with them.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While problems such as bullying or severe depression may require help from school leaders or a psychologist, Khanna said anxiety usually comes from the “what ifs.” The fastest way to get out of that spiral is to help children ask different questions and plan action. One young girl Khanna worked with this summer was worried about getting teased on the bus. Rather than identifying all the ways to solve the potential problem, Khanna helped the girl plan what she wanted to do more of on the bus, including saying “hi” to all the classmates she knows. “Planning that action actually creates a lot of relief,” Khanna said. “It’s like you’ve just given your body the signal that you’re OK because you’ve just planned to do something.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shifting the focus \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58221/down-with-toxic-positivity-for-teachers-and-students-healing-isnt-blind-optimism\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">doesn’t mean pretending everything is OK\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and it doesn’t mean children won’t experience discomfort when they get back on the bus or in the classroom. But Dr. Khanna said it can guide children to strategies for making themselves feel better in hard moments. “Whenever we work with kids with any kind of anxiety, we’re trying to help them identify the thing that they’ve been avoiding and then try to move them slowly towards getting more and more comfortable doing those things.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To help her son through the first week of camp, Lucianovic said they talked about his feelings and strategized how to recover and return to fun throughout the day. By the time three weeks had passed, the 8-year-old had a different reason to be sad: he didn’t want camp to end. Still, the experience made Lucianovic worried about the emotional needs of other kids as schools reopen in the wake of distance or hybrid learning.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>What Teachers Can Do\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I’m very concerned that our schools are just going to act like everything is just normal and fine because we’re all back together,” Lucianovic said. Rather than waiting to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://childmind.org/audience/for-educators/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">respond to warning signs\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, she wants to see schools proactively help students \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57503/outside-inside-is-a-time-capsule-that-helps-kids-and-adults-reflect-on-pandemic-life\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">process what’s happened in their lives since March 2020\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “I’m talking about really open forums of, like, ‘Hey, we’ve been through this and we should sit with the fact that it sucks and validate those feelings,’ so that kids just don’t feel like they’re supposed to pretend to be normal.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Affirming children’s emotions is one the best things adults can do as kids cope with stressful changes, according to Khanna. “Our job is to demonstrate confidence and calm and that they’re going to be OK,” she said. Another role that teachers in particular can play is creating predictability. That can include taking tours of the school and classroom, setting behavioral expectations, breaking down tasks into individual steps and providing an agenda. “Every time we do something in a consistent way … our body learns and it resets and it will get better.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With amplified stress this year, kids might need more practice with routines, and teachers might need more patience. Rosenberg, of the ACA, said camp staff this summer found that kids needed more transition time between activities. They also found that, even as campers expressed more discomfort with interacting with new people, they really craved chances to just talk. Making time right away for students to build relationships is a lesson teachers can take from summer camps, Rosenberg said. And getting outside and being active is a great way to do that. “I think that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56735/how-outdoor-learning-can-bring-curiosity-and-connection-to-education-in-tough-times\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">kinetic and experiential learning\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is exactly what kids need after they’ve been isolated and sheltered for 18 months.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To manage the tension between social anxiety and the need to connect, Dr. Khanna recommended starting with small steps and building up. For example, instead of jumping into round-robin reading, a teacher can have pairs read aloud to each other, then to a group of five, then to the whole class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When tolerable anxiety morphs into a breakdown or acting out, removing the student from the classroom or stressor isn’t the best idea, Khanna said. It’s a short-term solution, because the relief from the fight-or-flight reaction “actually came in the form of leaving the problem and now you’re probably going to have it come up again.” Instead, she suggested finding a small task that allows the student to regain a sense of control — that planned action idea again. Ideally, the task will include an avenue for rejoining the group when the student is ready. For instance, a teacher might ask if the student wants to organize the classroom bookshelf for a few minutes and then pick one book that the class can read together.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>How Parents and Teachers Can Work Together\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anxiety about the return to school buildings isn’t exclusive to children or teens. Parents and teachers have dealt with a lot of change during the pandemic, and surging coronavirus cases from the Delta variant have thrown \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58384/a-vaccine-for-children-is-not-likely-to-be-approved-until-the-end-of-year\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">additional stressors\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> into the mix. To ensure that they can support young people, adults first need to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57818/if-your-brain-feels-foggy-and-youre-tired-all-the-time-youre-not-alone\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">take care of themselves\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Enenbach said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additionally, parents and teachers need to support each other. “Parent-teacher conferences generally revolve around how the kid is doing,” Enenbach said. “But I think it’s nice for the teacher to check in with the parents and the parent to check in with the teacher just to see how they’re doing. It’s just sort of an empathic thing to do that really solidifies that relationship.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Enenbach also said it’s more important than ever for parents and teachers to communicate about what they’re observing in the classroom and at home. He pointed out that back-to-school time always brings \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58292/an-8th-grader-finally-returns-to-school-in-person-hoping-it-lasts\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a mix of excitement and anxiety\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. While those feelings are understandably heightened now, he said, “We’ll get through this and we’ll get through it together.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Enenbach and Khanna both warned against imposing artificial timelines, though. In particular, the readjustment period may be hardest and longest for children who \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54238/your-strategies-for-supporting-anxious-kids-at-home-and-at-school\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">struggled with anxiety\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> before the pandemic, those who entered remote learning \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57373/why-we-need-to-pay-more-attention-to-the-youngest-children-right-now-and-their-parents\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">just before hitting a developmental milestone\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and children who \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57982/trauma-is-a-lens-not-a-label-how-schools-can-support-all-students\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">experienced trauma\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> during this period.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Menlo Park, Lucianovic’s freshly minted third grader returned to school in late August. So did her older son, a middle schooler who completed all of last year online. After the first week, Lucianovic reported that her kids’ spirits were high. Still, she was bracing for tears or yelling to come eventually. As Rosenberg said, “The impact of the pandemic is not going to melt away with one summer camp.” The same goes for the first week of school.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For the first three days of summer camp, Stephanie Lucianovic’s 8-year-old son arrived home with tear-streaked cheeks. The causes varied — a skinned knee, another child kicking sand on his water bottle and other small bumps in days filled with climbing trees and making clay art. “All valid, emotional things, but he was really very quick to tears those first couple of days,” said Lucianovic, who lives in Menlo Park, California. For most of the 2020-21 school year, her son attended second grade in a hybrid format, with alternating weeks of in-person and virtual classes. She attributed his summer camp reactions to emotions worn thin by the dealing with many changes since COVID-19 arrived in the spring of his first grade year.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lucianovic’s observations echoed what camp directors noticed among many kids this season, according to Tom Rosenberg, President and CEO of the American Camp Association. One camp director called it “the summer of more,” he said, because they saw “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58263/at-summer-camp-more-anxiety-more-learning-more-hugs-same-fun\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">more joy, but also more anxiety\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, more amplified emotional distress, more, you know, challenges.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.muniyakhannaphd.com/drkhanna.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Muniya Khanna\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, strong emotional reactions and increased social discomfort are predictable responses as youngsters emerge from more than a year of isolation and altered routines caused by the pandemic. Khanna is a clinical psychologist in Pennsylvania who specializes in treatment of childhood anxiety. She explained that anxiety is part of the body’s fight-or-flight response to uncertainty. While in-person activities may be billed as a “return to normal,” Khanna said it also brings with it the uncertainties of social interactions with which children have been out of practice. As a result, she said, children’s bodies are “kind of primed to feel really more uncomfortable than ever before in going towards those things.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To ease the adjustment, Khanna and other experts recommended that parents and teachers \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57108/listen-and-connect-how-parents-can-support-teens-mental-health-right-now\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">listen\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and observe, help children shift their focus, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58274/safety-agency-connection-priorities-to-help-students-transition-back-to-school\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reestablish routines\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and communicate with each other. “This won’t be an ideal transition. But I do think if we kind of stick to those basics, that we’re going to get there,” said Khanna.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>What Parents Can Do\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For parents like Lucianovic, child psychiatrist \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://childmind.org/bio/michael-enenbach-md/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Michael Enenbach\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> recommends learning the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://childmind.org/article/what-are-the-signs-of-anxiety/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">signs of anxiety\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and simply paying attention. “Checking in every day, like, ‘How’s your anxiety? How’s your depression?’ can be a little bit much for a kid,” said Enenbach, who is clinical director and associate medical director at the Child Mind Institute. “So it’s about observing their behaviors, observing what they’re struggling with and then sort of having an open-ended conversation with them.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While problems such as bullying or severe depression may require help from school leaders or a psychologist, Khanna said anxiety usually comes from the “what ifs.” The fastest way to get out of that spiral is to help children ask different questions and plan action. One young girl Khanna worked with this summer was worried about getting teased on the bus. Rather than identifying all the ways to solve the potential problem, Khanna helped the girl plan what she wanted to do more of on the bus, including saying “hi” to all the classmates she knows. “Planning that action actually creates a lot of relief,” Khanna said. “It’s like you’ve just given your body the signal that you’re OK because you’ve just planned to do something.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shifting the focus \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58221/down-with-toxic-positivity-for-teachers-and-students-healing-isnt-blind-optimism\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">doesn’t mean pretending everything is OK\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and it doesn’t mean children won’t experience discomfort when they get back on the bus or in the classroom. But Dr. Khanna said it can guide children to strategies for making themselves feel better in hard moments. “Whenever we work with kids with any kind of anxiety, we’re trying to help them identify the thing that they’ve been avoiding and then try to move them slowly towards getting more and more comfortable doing those things.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To help her son through the first week of camp, Lucianovic said they talked about his feelings and strategized how to recover and return to fun throughout the day. By the time three weeks had passed, the 8-year-old had a different reason to be sad: he didn’t want camp to end. Still, the experience made Lucianovic worried about the emotional needs of other kids as schools reopen in the wake of distance or hybrid learning.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>What Teachers Can Do\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I’m very concerned that our schools are just going to act like everything is just normal and fine because we’re all back together,” Lucianovic said. Rather than waiting to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://childmind.org/audience/for-educators/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">respond to warning signs\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, she wants to see schools proactively help students \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57503/outside-inside-is-a-time-capsule-that-helps-kids-and-adults-reflect-on-pandemic-life\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">process what’s happened in their lives since March 2020\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “I’m talking about really open forums of, like, ‘Hey, we’ve been through this and we should sit with the fact that it sucks and validate those feelings,’ so that kids just don’t feel like they’re supposed to pretend to be normal.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Affirming children’s emotions is one the best things adults can do as kids cope with stressful changes, according to Khanna. “Our job is to demonstrate confidence and calm and that they’re going to be OK,” she said. Another role that teachers in particular can play is creating predictability. That can include taking tours of the school and classroom, setting behavioral expectations, breaking down tasks into individual steps and providing an agenda. “Every time we do something in a consistent way … our body learns and it resets and it will get better.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With amplified stress this year, kids might need more practice with routines, and teachers might need more patience. Rosenberg, of the ACA, said camp staff this summer found that kids needed more transition time between activities. They also found that, even as campers expressed more discomfort with interacting with new people, they really craved chances to just talk. Making time right away for students to build relationships is a lesson teachers can take from summer camps, Rosenberg said. And getting outside and being active is a great way to do that. “I think that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56735/how-outdoor-learning-can-bring-curiosity-and-connection-to-education-in-tough-times\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">kinetic and experiential learning\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is exactly what kids need after they’ve been isolated and sheltered for 18 months.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To manage the tension between social anxiety and the need to connect, Dr. Khanna recommended starting with small steps and building up. For example, instead of jumping into round-robin reading, a teacher can have pairs read aloud to each other, then to a group of five, then to the whole class.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When tolerable anxiety morphs into a breakdown or acting out, removing the student from the classroom or stressor isn’t the best idea, Khanna said. It’s a short-term solution, because the relief from the fight-or-flight reaction “actually came in the form of leaving the problem and now you’re probably going to have it come up again.” Instead, she suggested finding a small task that allows the student to regain a sense of control — that planned action idea again. Ideally, the task will include an avenue for rejoining the group when the student is ready. For instance, a teacher might ask if the student wants to organize the classroom bookshelf for a few minutes and then pick one book that the class can read together.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>How Parents and Teachers Can Work Together\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anxiety about the return to school buildings isn’t exclusive to children or teens. Parents and teachers have dealt with a lot of change during the pandemic, and surging coronavirus cases from the Delta variant have thrown \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58384/a-vaccine-for-children-is-not-likely-to-be-approved-until-the-end-of-year\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">additional stressors\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> into the mix. To ensure that they can support young people, adults first need to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57818/if-your-brain-feels-foggy-and-youre-tired-all-the-time-youre-not-alone\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">take care of themselves\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Enenbach said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additionally, parents and teachers need to support each other. “Parent-teacher conferences generally revolve around how the kid is doing,” Enenbach said. “But I think it’s nice for the teacher to check in with the parents and the parent to check in with the teacher just to see how they’re doing. It’s just sort of an empathic thing to do that really solidifies that relationship.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Enenbach also said it’s more important than ever for parents and teachers to communicate about what they’re observing in the classroom and at home. He pointed out that back-to-school time always brings \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58292/an-8th-grader-finally-returns-to-school-in-person-hoping-it-lasts\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a mix of excitement and anxiety\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. While those feelings are understandably heightened now, he said, “We’ll get through this and we’ll get through it together.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Enenbach and Khanna both warned against imposing artificial timelines, though. In particular, the readjustment period may be hardest and longest for children who \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54238/your-strategies-for-supporting-anxious-kids-at-home-and-at-school\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">struggled with anxiety\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> before the pandemic, those who entered remote learning \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57373/why-we-need-to-pay-more-attention-to-the-youngest-children-right-now-and-their-parents\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">just before hitting a developmental milestone\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and children who \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57982/trauma-is-a-lens-not-a-label-how-schools-can-support-all-students\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">experienced trauma\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> during this period.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Menlo Park, Lucianovic’s freshly minted third grader returned to school in late August. So did her older son, a middle schooler who completed all of last year online. After the first week, Lucianovic reported that her kids’ spirits were high. Still, she was bracing for tears or yelling to come eventually. As Rosenberg said, “The impact of the pandemic is not going to melt away with one summer camp.” The same goes for the first week of school.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Students across Illinois will be able to take up to five excused mental health days starting in January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under a\u003ca href=\"https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/102/SB/PDF/10200SB1577lv.pdf\"> bill\u003c/a> signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker last month, students who decide to take a mental health day will not be required to provide their school with a doctor's note and will be able to make up any work that was missed on their day off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Having this now for all students across the state will be really beneficial, especially with what's going on with COVID,\" State Rep. Barbara Hernandez, who co-sponsored the bill, told the \u003ca href=\"https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/School-students-to-get-no-questions-asked-16427152.php\">Journal-Courier\u003c/a>. \"Many students feel stressed, and have developed anxiety and depression because they're not able to see teachers and friends, and may have lower grades due to remote learning.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Child psychiatrists say they expect more children will need help\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The pandemic has placed unique strains on children, and as a new school year begins, child psychiatrists say they expect to see a surge of kids who need help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6945a3.htm?s_cid=mm6945a3_w\">According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u003c/a>, between March and May of last year, hospitals across the country saw a 24% increase in the number of mental health emergency visits by kids aged 5 to 11 years old, and a 31% increase for kids 12 to 17.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The younger school-age kids are more anxious about separation from their parents and caregivers,\" child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Ujjwal Ramtekkar at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/back-to-school-live-updates/2021/08/30/1032461532/as-schools-reopen-child-psychiatrists-expect-to-see-a-surge-of-kids-who-need-hel\">told NPR\u003c/a>. \"They're worried about getting sick,\" or their parents getting sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For teens, the challenges can be somewhat different, according to Ramtekkar. Most teenagers are struggling with social and academic anxiety, he said, as most are worried about socializing with their peers again and adapting to full-time in-person learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The new law is designed to help kids get care\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>With the new law in Illinois, Hernandez says students will have more of an opportunity to get the care they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I am really excited for this. I think it will help students, parents and teachers, and can help them understand what's going on in their students' lives,\" Hernandez said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once a student requests a second mental health day, a school counselor will reach out to their family and the student may be referred to get professional help, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/102/SB/PDF/10200SB1577lv.pdf\">bill\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hernandez says that after students take their second mental health day, they should understand that a conversation with an adult is needed about whatever it is they're going through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Many students are going through a lot mentally and emotionally and they need support,\" Hernandez said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Several states have taken similar steps\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>School districts across Illinois will have until the end of the year to come up with a specific plan to execute the new law ahead of its effective date in January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Illinois joins states such as Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Virginia that have passed similar bills over the last two years allowing students to be absent from school due to mental or behavioral health reasons, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/well/mind/mental-health-day-laws-kids.html\">The New York Times\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Kids+In+Illinois+Will+Soon+Be+Able+To+Take+5+Mental+Health+Days+From+School&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Students across Illinois will be able to take up to five excused mental health days starting in January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under a\u003ca href=\"https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/102/SB/PDF/10200SB1577lv.pdf\"> bill\u003c/a> signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker last month, students who decide to take a mental health day will not be required to provide their school with a doctor's note and will be able to make up any work that was missed on their day off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Having this now for all students across the state will be really beneficial, especially with what's going on with COVID,\" State Rep. Barbara Hernandez, who co-sponsored the bill, told the \u003ca href=\"https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/School-students-to-get-no-questions-asked-16427152.php\">Journal-Courier\u003c/a>. \"Many students feel stressed, and have developed anxiety and depression because they're not able to see teachers and friends, and may have lower grades due to remote learning.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Child psychiatrists say they expect more children will need help\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The pandemic has placed unique strains on children, and as a new school year begins, child psychiatrists say they expect to see a surge of kids who need help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6945a3.htm?s_cid=mm6945a3_w\">According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u003c/a>, between March and May of last year, hospitals across the country saw a 24% increase in the number of mental health emergency visits by kids aged 5 to 11 years old, and a 31% increase for kids 12 to 17.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The younger school-age kids are more anxious about separation from their parents and caregivers,\" child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Ujjwal Ramtekkar at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/back-to-school-live-updates/2021/08/30/1032461532/as-schools-reopen-child-psychiatrists-expect-to-see-a-surge-of-kids-who-need-hel\">told NPR\u003c/a>. \"They're worried about getting sick,\" or their parents getting sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For teens, the challenges can be somewhat different, according to Ramtekkar. Most teenagers are struggling with social and academic anxiety, he said, as most are worried about socializing with their peers again and adapting to full-time in-person learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The new law is designed to help kids get care\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>With the new law in Illinois, Hernandez says students will have more of an opportunity to get the care they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I am really excited for this. I think it will help students, parents and teachers, and can help them understand what's going on in their students' lives,\" Hernandez said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once a student requests a second mental health day, a school counselor will reach out to their family and the student may be referred to get professional help, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/102/SB/PDF/10200SB1577lv.pdf\">bill\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hernandez says that after students take their second mental health day, they should understand that a conversation with an adult is needed about whatever it is they're going through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Many students are going through a lot mentally and emotionally and they need support,\" Hernandez said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Several states have taken similar steps\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>School districts across Illinois will have until the end of the year to come up with a specific plan to execute the new law ahead of its effective date in January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Illinois joins states such as Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Virginia that have passed similar bills over the last two years allowing students to be absent from school due to mental or behavioral health reasons, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/well/mind/mental-health-day-laws-kids.html\">The New York Times\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Kids+In+Illinois+Will+Soon+Be+Able+To+Take+5+Mental+Health+Days+From+School&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "With Return to School, Number of Kids Who Need Mental Health Help Expected to Rise",
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"content": "\u003cp>As schools across the country reopen, mental health professionals are anticipating a surge in the number of kids seeking help in the coming weeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's not unlike previous years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Historically, our busiest times of the year are a couple of weeks into the school year, perhaps the end of September, beginning of October,\" says \u003ca href=\"https://healthcare.utah.edu/fad/mddetail.php?physicianID=u0615696&name=d-richard-martini\">Dr. Richard Martini\u003c/a>, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Utah and Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City. \"These are times where you really begin to identify kids that are struggling — the schools begin to identify them.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what's different this year is that the pandemic has already increased the number of kids struggling with mental illness. Another surge this fall might mean a further worsening of an ongoing crisis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It was about this time last year that hospitals started raising red flags, like 'we are being overrun in the [emergency department],' \" says Amy Knight, president of the Children's Hospital Association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6945a3.htm?s_cid=mm6945a3_w\">According to the CDC\u003c/a>, between March and May, 2020, hospitals across the country saw a 24% increase in the proportion of mental health emergency visits by kids aged 5 to 11 years old, and a 31% increase for kids 12 to 17.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"And it hasn't really subsided,\" says Knight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, the number of kids coming to hospitals for mental health needs in 2021 is 15% higher than two years ago, says Knight, referring to data collected by the Children's Hospital Association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While many kids are excited to go back to school, mental health care providers around the country are already seeing signs of growing anxiety among students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We have already been seeing a lot of pick up in pre-existing anxiety in anticipation of school starting,\" says child and adolescent psychiatrist \u003ca href=\"https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/find-a-doctor/profiles/ujjwal-p-ramtekkar\">Dr. Ujjwal Ramtekkar\u003c/a> at Nationwide Children's Hospital. The hospital has a school-based mental health program in 70 schools in the area. (It also provides financial support to NPR.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The causes for anxiety differ for different age groups. \"The younger school-age kids are more anxious about separation from their parents and caregivers,\" he says. \"They're worried about getting sick,\" or their parents getting sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the other hand, most teenagers are struggling with social and academic anxiety, he adds. They are worried about socializing with their peers again and adapting to full-time in-person learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"As the [Covid-19 case] numbers were improving, there was a significant amount of hope that, oh, great, now I can play basketball, or I can hug my friends when I see them,\" says \u003ca href=\"https://www.wellmindsconsulting.com/about.php\">Dr. Nicole Christian-Brathwaite\u003c/a>, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Boston.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With cases rising again, she says, there's a lot of disappointment especially among older students. Many of her patients are angry, frustrated and stressed by the uncertainty of what this school year will look like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"That uncertainty increases anxiety,\" says Christian-Brathwaite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kids most vulnerable to feeling anxious right now, or to having other mental health problems are those with certain risk factors, say child and adolescent psychiatrists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is more for kids who already are prone to anxiety or they already had pre-existing depression, anxiety, separation related issues, trauma or things like that,\" says Ramtekkar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And kids in communities of color have been disproportionately affected by trauma during the pandemic, says \u003ca href=\"https://childadolescentpsych.cumc.columbia.edu/faculty/warren-yk-ng-md\">Dr. Warren Ng\u003c/a>, president-elect for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. That's because their communities have been disproportionately affected by the health and economic impacts of the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"What we've experienced over the past 18 months is that there's been a lot of stress and anxiety experienced by our children and adolescents and families,\" says Ng, who also directs outpatient behavioral health at Columbia University, which primarily serves Latino and African American families in Manhattan and the Bronx.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Many of these children also live in households where there are more multigenerational family members, where you're more likely to experience a loss,\" he says\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are also more likely to have fallen behind with school work, he adds, because many don't have a private space at home for attending school online.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"What we've seen with the youth has been much more anxiety related to preparedness,\" says Ng. \"They're concerned about how far they've fallen in terms of their schooling and their education and their progress. They've worried that they've lost a year of schooling.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fortunately, schools and teachers are aware of all these issues. And many have been proactively reaching out to mental health experts for guidance and advice, says Christian-Brathwaite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I am getting a significant number of calls from schools requesting education and professional development for teachers around how to support kids with trauma,\" she says. \"They're looking for tools to help support students.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Children's hospitals, too, have been preparing, some adding more resources in anticipation of a fall surge in mental health visits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This summer allowed us at the children's hospital and at the psychiatric hospital to catch up a little bit with recruitment and expanding services and capacity,\" says \u003ca href=\"https://www.northwell.edu/find-care/find-a-doctor/psychiatry/dr-vera-feuer-md-11351332\">Dr. Vera Feuer\u003c/a>, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Cohen's Children's Medical Center in Long Island, N.Y., and the associate vice president for school mental health at Northwell Health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She hopes more kids and families will have access to care if and when kids struggle with mental health problems. For now, she says, her team is just watching and waiting. \"It's the quiet before the storm phase.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=As+Schools+Reopen%2C+Child+Psychiatrists+Expect+To+See+A+Surge+Of+Kids+Who+Need+Help&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As schools across the country reopen, mental health professionals are anticipating a surge in the number of kids seeking help in the coming weeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's not unlike previous years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Historically, our busiest times of the year are a couple of weeks into the school year, perhaps the end of September, beginning of October,\" says \u003ca href=\"https://healthcare.utah.edu/fad/mddetail.php?physicianID=u0615696&name=d-richard-martini\">Dr. Richard Martini\u003c/a>, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Utah and Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City. \"These are times where you really begin to identify kids that are struggling — the schools begin to identify them.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what's different this year is that the pandemic has already increased the number of kids struggling with mental illness. Another surge this fall might mean a further worsening of an ongoing crisis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It was about this time last year that hospitals started raising red flags, like 'we are being overrun in the [emergency department],' \" says Amy Knight, president of the Children's Hospital Association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6945a3.htm?s_cid=mm6945a3_w\">According to the CDC\u003c/a>, between March and May, 2020, hospitals across the country saw a 24% increase in the proportion of mental health emergency visits by kids aged 5 to 11 years old, and a 31% increase for kids 12 to 17.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"And it hasn't really subsided,\" says Knight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, the number of kids coming to hospitals for mental health needs in 2021 is 15% higher than two years ago, says Knight, referring to data collected by the Children's Hospital Association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While many kids are excited to go back to school, mental health care providers around the country are already seeing signs of growing anxiety among students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We have already been seeing a lot of pick up in pre-existing anxiety in anticipation of school starting,\" says child and adolescent psychiatrist \u003ca href=\"https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/find-a-doctor/profiles/ujjwal-p-ramtekkar\">Dr. Ujjwal Ramtekkar\u003c/a> at Nationwide Children's Hospital. The hospital has a school-based mental health program in 70 schools in the area. (It also provides financial support to NPR.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The causes for anxiety differ for different age groups. \"The younger school-age kids are more anxious about separation from their parents and caregivers,\" he says. \"They're worried about getting sick,\" or their parents getting sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the other hand, most teenagers are struggling with social and academic anxiety, he adds. They are worried about socializing with their peers again and adapting to full-time in-person learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"As the [Covid-19 case] numbers were improving, there was a significant amount of hope that, oh, great, now I can play basketball, or I can hug my friends when I see them,\" says \u003ca href=\"https://www.wellmindsconsulting.com/about.php\">Dr. Nicole Christian-Brathwaite\u003c/a>, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Boston.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With cases rising again, she says, there's a lot of disappointment especially among older students. Many of her patients are angry, frustrated and stressed by the uncertainty of what this school year will look like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"That uncertainty increases anxiety,\" says Christian-Brathwaite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kids most vulnerable to feeling anxious right now, or to having other mental health problems are those with certain risk factors, say child and adolescent psychiatrists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is more for kids who already are prone to anxiety or they already had pre-existing depression, anxiety, separation related issues, trauma or things like that,\" says Ramtekkar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And kids in communities of color have been disproportionately affected by trauma during the pandemic, says \u003ca href=\"https://childadolescentpsych.cumc.columbia.edu/faculty/warren-yk-ng-md\">Dr. Warren Ng\u003c/a>, president-elect for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. That's because their communities have been disproportionately affected by the health and economic impacts of the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"What we've experienced over the past 18 months is that there's been a lot of stress and anxiety experienced by our children and adolescents and families,\" says Ng, who also directs outpatient behavioral health at Columbia University, which primarily serves Latino and African American families in Manhattan and the Bronx.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Many of these children also live in households where there are more multigenerational family members, where you're more likely to experience a loss,\" he says\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are also more likely to have fallen behind with school work, he adds, because many don't have a private space at home for attending school online.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"What we've seen with the youth has been much more anxiety related to preparedness,\" says Ng. \"They're concerned about how far they've fallen in terms of their schooling and their education and their progress. They've worried that they've lost a year of schooling.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fortunately, schools and teachers are aware of all these issues. And many have been proactively reaching out to mental health experts for guidance and advice, says Christian-Brathwaite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I am getting a significant number of calls from schools requesting education and professional development for teachers around how to support kids with trauma,\" she says. \"They're looking for tools to help support students.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Children's hospitals, too, have been preparing, some adding more resources in anticipation of a fall surge in mental health visits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This summer allowed us at the children's hospital and at the psychiatric hospital to catch up a little bit with recruitment and expanding services and capacity,\" says \u003ca href=\"https://www.northwell.edu/find-care/find-a-doctor/psychiatry/dr-vera-feuer-md-11351332\">Dr. Vera Feuer\u003c/a>, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Cohen's Children's Medical Center in Long Island, N.Y., and the associate vice president for school mental health at Northwell Health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She hopes more kids and families will have access to care if and when kids struggle with mental health problems. For now, she says, her team is just watching and waiting. \"It's the quiet before the storm phase.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=As+Schools+Reopen%2C+Child+Psychiatrists+Expect+To+See+A+Surge+Of+Kids+Who+Need+Help&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Unplanned Lessons: What Pandemic Education Has Taught Teachers",
"title": "Unplanned Lessons: What Pandemic Education Has Taught Teachers",
"headTitle": "MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, American educators have experienced unprecedented change and challenges. But not everything unexpected is undesirable. Whether in virtual classrooms, hybrid instruction or in-person schools, teachers also gained new insights on themselves, their students and their practice. Now, as the Delta variant sparks ongoing worries about school building re-openings, five teachers share the unplanned lessons they will carry into the new school year and beyond.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-58396\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lucia_bowers1-160x213.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"213\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lucia_bowers1-160x213.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lucia_bowers1-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lucia_bowers1-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lucia_bowers1.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">Lucia Bowers\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cem>English teacher, Dolores Huerta Middle School\u003cbr>\nBurbank, California\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Recognizing resilience\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We talk about kids being resilient all the time. I truly believe they are. But this is the first time where I noticed my own resiliency in the moment. I'm proud of that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Lucia Bowers, a mom of three and teacher to more than 100, the idea of teaching online while keeping her own family afloat and the house stocked with toilet paper sounds like a science fiction novel. Yet for the past year, it was her reality.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sure, there were days when the WiFi went out, but Bowers took those hurdles one at a time. And sometime last fall, she looked up from teaching to a smoothly operating scene. She saw her second-grader attending Zoom class in the living room right beside her and her sophomore daughter dancing in the backyard for P.E. Meanwhile, her freshman son studied biology in his bedroom and her husband worked from the family room.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I thought, ‘Is this really happening?’ We talk about kids being resilient all the time. I truly believe they are. But this is the first time where I noticed my own resiliency in the moment. I'm proud of that,” Bowers said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The pandemic also highlighted to Bowers that her students may not have the same resources that were in her home. She said that as the year progressed and students used up school-provided supplies, some families quickly replaced them while others couldn’t.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her school worked to fill in the gaps, but seeing those disparities has changed how Bowers thinks about equity in the school building, too. She said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://dredwardseducator.com/it-was-never-about-pencils/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">it can create stigma and shame when teachers call out students who don’t have supplies ready\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, or when they put flags on classroom pencils to make sure they stay in the room. Going forward, her assumption will be that every kid needs a pencil or other materials. “And if they don't — great, cool. But I'm going to still provide it for them and just hope that they will not feel embarrassed to take the supplies that are there.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-58394\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-160x253.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"253\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-160x253.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-800x1267.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-1020x1616.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-768x1217.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-970x1536.jpg 970w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-1293x2048.jpg 1293w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609.jpg 1337w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">Rickey Townsend\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>7th grade math teacher, Benjamin Franklin International Exploratory Academy\u003cbr>\nDallas, Texas\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Opening up online\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I am learning that there are platforms to capture the voice of all students, no matter if extroverted or introverted.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One day in late 2020, as students logged into Rickey Townsend’s hybrid classroom, they encountered the usual digital scene. Their math teacher, wearing a suit and tie with matching glasses, greeted students by name. His own name was displayed in the bottom corner of his picture. But that day, the transparent gray label included a few new words: “He/Him/His.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Townsend appended those \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.gse.upenn.edu/news/educators-playbook/erin-cross-pronouns-gender-identity\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">pronouns\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> after seeing a tweet that suggested including them would acknowledge and affirm \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/leadership/the-pandemic-and-politics-made-life-especially-rough-for-lgbtq-youth-survey-finds/2021/07\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">LGBTQ students\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. He didn’t point out the change, but his seventh graders noticed. One student sent him a private message saying they’d never seen a teacher do that and asking if it was OK to list their pronouns, too. It was the start of conversations Townsend said probably wouldn’t have happened in another year. And it contributed to a larger trend of his students opening up more in Zoom chat than when within an arms’ length of peers. “This is the first year a lot of students shared about who they are personally, how they identify,” Townsend said. They shared what's going on at home (and about) \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57511/why-helping-grieving-students-heal-matters-so-much\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">deaths in the family\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. I don't think that I would have gotten that in a traditional school setting.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Townsend found other small but intentional acts to connect with students, too. He used Zoom polls for mental health checks, and he \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58221/down-with-toxic-positivity-for-teachers-and-students-healing-isnt-blind-optimism\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">spoke honestly\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> about his own ups and downs. Several times per week, he started class with non-math questions about student interests, and after the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/insurrection-at-the-capitol/2021/01/07/954415771/how-to-talk-to-kids-about-the-riots-at-the-u-s-capitol\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Capitol riot in January\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, he set aside linear equations so students could process national events.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Those kinds of conversations, along with \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56836/how-teachers-are-leaning-on-each-other-to-stay-resilient-during-covid-19\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a supportive network\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, helped Townsend through the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57716/we-need-to-be-nurtured-too-many-teachers-say-theyre-reaching-a-breaking-point\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">harder days\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. This was his fifth year teaching and the first time he contemplated quitting. He said the Zoom connections weren’t as fulfilling as those in a physical classroom, but they have caused him to reflect on how he \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/introvert\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">engages with quiet students\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in-person. He might, for example, continue using virtual check-in polls or give student index cards as an alternate way to share. “Pre-coronavirus, I was guilty of encouraging students who were labeled as quiet scholars to speak up in class,” Townsend said. “I am learning that there are platforms to capture the voice of all students, no matter if (they are) extroverted or introverted.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-58399\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-160x213.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"213\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-160x213.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">Janelle Henderson\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Grade 3 teacher, Mill Creek Leadership Academy\u003cbr>\nLouisville, Kentucky\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Hard conversations, healthy habits\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I was in a lighter mood, we had more fun together. And I know my students got more out of our content.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last September, when a Kentucky grand jury \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/09/23/914250463/breonna-taylor-charging-decision-to-be-announced-this-afternoon-lawyer-says\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">brought no charges\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> against the police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor, Janelle Henderson took a deep breath. Discussing tough topics is nothing new to Henderson’s third grade classroom, but she knew this conversation would be different. For one thing, it came early in the year, with little time to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57241/six-ways-to-build-community-in-online-classrooms\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">build trust among students\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. What’s more, the events quite literally hit close to home.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I don't want to say our city was on fire, but the energy was palpable, like everyone was in a very heightened state of anxiety and stress,” Henderson said. That meant she needed to establish a clear structure and ground rules for discussing the news. Those rules included speaking in “I” statements, not “we” statements, that it’s not OK to hurt people or things, that no one was required to share, and that anyone could turn off their screens at any time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Henderson raised the topic in small group sessions with students. With each group, she started by sharing that she was “not OK” and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/social-emotional-learning\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">affirming any emotions\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> her students felt. Then she stepped back to listen. After everyone got a chance to speak, they moved on to the day’s regular content. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Henderson said that facilitating those conversations terrified her — especially knowing that families of students would be listening and watching — but they were necessary. And September was just the start. Throughout the year, her third graders circled up online to discuss the presidential election, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13885541/black-panther-star-chadwick-boseman-dies-of-cancer-at-43\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chadwick Boseman’s death\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the Capitol insurrection and more. “We did a lot in this virtual setting that I didn't ever expect to do, but it just worked, and that was the classroom that I had,” Henderson said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It helped that Henderson herself felt more grounded and present this year. Her school didn’t require as many hours of synchronous virtual instruction as they would have in-person, and Henderson used the first hour of the day to prepare at her own pace. She also took more movement and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56849/look-inward-to-make-external-change-advice-from-a-meditation-teacher\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">meditation breaks\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> throughout the day. “So as a human, I just felt really grounded, like I didn't feel like there was this pressure to rush, rush, rush and go, go, go.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That pace may be hard to maintain with a return to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/here-we-are-again-weary-teachers-brace-for-another-covid-school-year/2021/08\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">regular schedules\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, but Henderson said she’ll try to set boundaries, like guarding her planning period for self-care rather than squeezing in a dozen miscellaneous tasks. If she can, she knows it will be good for herself and for her third-graders. Just as it was this year. “I was in a lighter mood, we had more fun together. And I know my students got more out of our content,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-58398\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/jennifer_dao-e1630309274176-160x301.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"301\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/jennifer_dao-e1630309274176-160x301.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/jennifer_dao-e1630309274176.png 560w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">Jennifer Dao\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Algebra teacher, Nichols Middle School\u003cbr>\nEvanston, Illinois\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tapping into technology\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I used to think I was a pretty tech savvy teacher, but remote learning has taught me to tap more into my tech skills and use them to be more intentional with my students.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jennifer Dao’s mathematics teaching style has always been pretty open-ended. There’s a lesson plan and a learning goal, of course, but after presenting a problem, she follows her students’ lead. “Whatever the kids do, I use it throughout the lesson to summarize and to piece together their work,” she explained.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Without students in the same room as her until February, Dao decided to implement a new structure this year. Along with some colleagues, she adopted a practice called \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.geniconsulting.org/chapter-6#learning-contracts-the-structure-of-self-directedness\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">learning contracts\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> from \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.geniconsulting.org/bio\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Larry Geni\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a retired science teacher. Using this model, Dao started each class with a slide containing information and links to everything that would be covered that day. The class spent the first 40 minutes on a warm-up and the main lesson. For the second half of class, students chose a task from three options to work on independently or with \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54986/how-black-girls-benefit-when-math-has-social-interaction-and-ways-to-learn-together\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">small groups\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One task might be watching a review video on a foundational skill or completing guided notes with teacher support. There are also advanced practice exercises for the day’s topic and advanced challenges related to the standard. Dao said these options helped her organize class more clearly, and it showed her that students benefit from visual and written instructions, in addition to the oral ones she gives in-person. “I used to think I was a pretty tech savvy teacher, but remote learning has taught me to tap more into my tech skills and use them to be more intentional with my students,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Choosing between tasks also improved students’ \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53524/how-revising-math-exams-turns-students-into-learners-not-processors\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">metacognitive skills\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by requiring them to take stock of their understanding. Students were “brutally honest” about themselves in weekly self-evaluations and optional blog posts, Dao said. Since she couldn’t \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54504/three-simple-tech-tools-to-make-math-thinking-visible\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">see students’ independent work\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> on paper, reading their self-reflections encouraged her. “It made me feel like the work that I put in wasn't for nothing, because a lot of teachers felt that frustration on Zoom, seeing just squares on a page. … It gave me a better snapshot of the kids.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cimg class=\"alignleft wp-image-58397 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lauren_merkley-e1630309436791-160x240.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lauren_merkley-e1630309436791-160x240.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lauren_merkley-e1630309436791.jpeg 645w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">Lauren Merkley\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>English teacher, Cottonwood High School\u003cbr>\nMurray, Utah\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A “both/and” year\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I must have said, ‘I can't do this’ 1,000 times this school year … But every time — every time! — I could do it. I could keep going.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Lauren Merkley, the 2020-21 school year started with a sense of foreboding. Her school began with both in-person and asynchronous virtual options. That meant she had to build an online class while also preparing for socially distanced traditional instruction. At the same time, ambient anxiety about possible closures loomed large. The school went fully remote twice in the fall because of surging COVID-19 numbers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“First quarter was brutal,” Merkley said. In her virtual classes, there were dozens of students she never saw or heard from. “They were ghosts,” she said. And that meant failing more students than ever before. It was all so much. “I must have said, ‘I can't do this’ 1,000 times this school year,” Merkley recalled. “But every morning my heart was beating, and I found that I could do it. Whatever ‘it’ was that day.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The seeming impossibility of so many tasks forced Merkley, who in 2020 was the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.deseret.com/utah/2019/9/6/20851964/utahs-teacher-of-the-year-2020-lauren-merkley\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Utah Teacher of the Year\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, to accept \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56650/were-all-new-this-year-how-advice-for-rookie-teachers-can-help-everyone-during-virtual-learning\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">imperfection in her teaching\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. She told students that she was learning alongside them and asked for their feedback. Though uncertainty persisted, things did improve after the first quarter. And like flowers pushing through cracks in concrete, some wonderful moments blossomed, too. Like when her students read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In FlipGrid video responses and comments, the high schoolers drew connections between King’s rhetoric and contemporary questions about police violence and the Black Lives Matter movement. The discussion had the highest engagement of any activity in Merkley’s virtual classes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While not every lesson sparked that kind of response, Merkley said that the pandemic and the politics of the past year catalyzed students to look beyond their usual rhythm of school or work or soccer practice. They \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56141/im-willing-to-fight-for-america-5-student-activists-on-protesting-for-change\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">made connections\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> between their lives and larger systems. “It's a both/and,” Merkley said. “It was (a year that we survived). But there were also moments where my kids felt so alive, where they felt so relevant, where what we were doing felt like it mattered.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For some teachers, the pandemic has tipped the scale from a stressful job to an untenable one, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/24/1-in-4-teachers-are-considering-quitting-after-this-past-year.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">prompting them to walk away\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Merkley, however, said this year reaffirmed her place in the profession. The successes may have been fewer, but they were hard won. “You're in it to help kids and to have those moments of discovery,” she said. “So when they came this year, I think they were all the sweeter because of that juxtaposition.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, American educators have experienced unprecedented change and challenges. But not everything unexpected is undesirable. Whether in virtual classrooms, hybrid instruction or in-person schools, teachers also gained new insights on themselves, their students and their practice. Now, as the Delta variant sparks ongoing worries about school building re-openings, five teachers share the unplanned lessons they will carry into the new school year and beyond.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-58396\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lucia_bowers1-160x213.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"213\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lucia_bowers1-160x213.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lucia_bowers1-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lucia_bowers1-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lucia_bowers1.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">Lucia Bowers\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cem>English teacher, Dolores Huerta Middle School\u003cbr>\nBurbank, California\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Recognizing resilience\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We talk about kids being resilient all the time. I truly believe they are. But this is the first time where I noticed my own resiliency in the moment. I'm proud of that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Lucia Bowers, a mom of three and teacher to more than 100, the idea of teaching online while keeping her own family afloat and the house stocked with toilet paper sounds like a science fiction novel. Yet for the past year, it was her reality.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sure, there were days when the WiFi went out, but Bowers took those hurdles one at a time. And sometime last fall, she looked up from teaching to a smoothly operating scene. She saw her second-grader attending Zoom class in the living room right beside her and her sophomore daughter dancing in the backyard for P.E. Meanwhile, her freshman son studied biology in his bedroom and her husband worked from the family room.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I thought, ‘Is this really happening?’ We talk about kids being resilient all the time. I truly believe they are. But this is the first time where I noticed my own resiliency in the moment. I'm proud of that,” Bowers said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The pandemic also highlighted to Bowers that her students may not have the same resources that were in her home. She said that as the year progressed and students used up school-provided supplies, some families quickly replaced them while others couldn’t.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her school worked to fill in the gaps, but seeing those disparities has changed how Bowers thinks about equity in the school building, too. She said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://dredwardseducator.com/it-was-never-about-pencils/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">it can create stigma and shame when teachers call out students who don’t have supplies ready\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, or when they put flags on classroom pencils to make sure they stay in the room. Going forward, her assumption will be that every kid needs a pencil or other materials. “And if they don't — great, cool. But I'm going to still provide it for them and just hope that they will not feel embarrassed to take the supplies that are there.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-58394\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-160x253.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"253\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-160x253.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-800x1267.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-1020x1616.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-768x1217.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-970x1536.jpg 970w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609-1293x2048.jpg 1293w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/rickey_townsend-scaled-e1630308852609.jpg 1337w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">Rickey Townsend\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>7th grade math teacher, Benjamin Franklin International Exploratory Academy\u003cbr>\nDallas, Texas\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Opening up online\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I am learning that there are platforms to capture the voice of all students, no matter if extroverted or introverted.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One day in late 2020, as students logged into Rickey Townsend’s hybrid classroom, they encountered the usual digital scene. Their math teacher, wearing a suit and tie with matching glasses, greeted students by name. His own name was displayed in the bottom corner of his picture. But that day, the transparent gray label included a few new words: “He/Him/His.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Townsend appended those \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.gse.upenn.edu/news/educators-playbook/erin-cross-pronouns-gender-identity\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">pronouns\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> after seeing a tweet that suggested including them would acknowledge and affirm \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/leadership/the-pandemic-and-politics-made-life-especially-rough-for-lgbtq-youth-survey-finds/2021/07\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">LGBTQ students\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. He didn’t point out the change, but his seventh graders noticed. One student sent him a private message saying they’d never seen a teacher do that and asking if it was OK to list their pronouns, too. It was the start of conversations Townsend said probably wouldn’t have happened in another year. And it contributed to a larger trend of his students opening up more in Zoom chat than when within an arms’ length of peers. “This is the first year a lot of students shared about who they are personally, how they identify,” Townsend said. They shared what's going on at home (and about) \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57511/why-helping-grieving-students-heal-matters-so-much\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">deaths in the family\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. I don't think that I would have gotten that in a traditional school setting.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Townsend found other small but intentional acts to connect with students, too. He used Zoom polls for mental health checks, and he \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58221/down-with-toxic-positivity-for-teachers-and-students-healing-isnt-blind-optimism\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">spoke honestly\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> about his own ups and downs. Several times per week, he started class with non-math questions about student interests, and after the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/insurrection-at-the-capitol/2021/01/07/954415771/how-to-talk-to-kids-about-the-riots-at-the-u-s-capitol\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Capitol riot in January\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, he set aside linear equations so students could process national events.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Those kinds of conversations, along with \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56836/how-teachers-are-leaning-on-each-other-to-stay-resilient-during-covid-19\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a supportive network\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, helped Townsend through the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57716/we-need-to-be-nurtured-too-many-teachers-say-theyre-reaching-a-breaking-point\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">harder days\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. This was his fifth year teaching and the first time he contemplated quitting. He said the Zoom connections weren’t as fulfilling as those in a physical classroom, but they have caused him to reflect on how he \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/introvert\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">engages with quiet students\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in-person. He might, for example, continue using virtual check-in polls or give student index cards as an alternate way to share. “Pre-coronavirus, I was guilty of encouraging students who were labeled as quiet scholars to speak up in class,” Townsend said. “I am learning that there are platforms to capture the voice of all students, no matter if (they are) extroverted or introverted.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-58399\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-160x213.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"213\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-160x213.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/janelle_henderson-scaled-e1630309065654.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">Janelle Henderson\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Grade 3 teacher, Mill Creek Leadership Academy\u003cbr>\nLouisville, Kentucky\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Hard conversations, healthy habits\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I was in a lighter mood, we had more fun together. And I know my students got more out of our content.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last September, when a Kentucky grand jury \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/09/23/914250463/breonna-taylor-charging-decision-to-be-announced-this-afternoon-lawyer-says\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">brought no charges\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> against the police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor, Janelle Henderson took a deep breath. Discussing tough topics is nothing new to Henderson’s third grade classroom, but she knew this conversation would be different. For one thing, it came early in the year, with little time to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57241/six-ways-to-build-community-in-online-classrooms\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">build trust among students\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. What’s more, the events quite literally hit close to home.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I don't want to say our city was on fire, but the energy was palpable, like everyone was in a very heightened state of anxiety and stress,” Henderson said. That meant she needed to establish a clear structure and ground rules for discussing the news. Those rules included speaking in “I” statements, not “we” statements, that it’s not OK to hurt people or things, that no one was required to share, and that anyone could turn off their screens at any time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Henderson raised the topic in small group sessions with students. With each group, she started by sharing that she was “not OK” and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/social-emotional-learning\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">affirming any emotions\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> her students felt. Then she stepped back to listen. After everyone got a chance to speak, they moved on to the day’s regular content. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Henderson said that facilitating those conversations terrified her — especially knowing that families of students would be listening and watching — but they were necessary. And September was just the start. Throughout the year, her third graders circled up online to discuss the presidential election, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13885541/black-panther-star-chadwick-boseman-dies-of-cancer-at-43\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chadwick Boseman’s death\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the Capitol insurrection and more. “We did a lot in this virtual setting that I didn't ever expect to do, but it just worked, and that was the classroom that I had,” Henderson said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It helped that Henderson herself felt more grounded and present this year. Her school didn’t require as many hours of synchronous virtual instruction as they would have in-person, and Henderson used the first hour of the day to prepare at her own pace. She also took more movement and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56849/look-inward-to-make-external-change-advice-from-a-meditation-teacher\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">meditation breaks\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> throughout the day. “So as a human, I just felt really grounded, like I didn't feel like there was this pressure to rush, rush, rush and go, go, go.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That pace may be hard to maintain with a return to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/here-we-are-again-weary-teachers-brace-for-another-covid-school-year/2021/08\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">regular schedules\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, but Henderson said she’ll try to set boundaries, like guarding her planning period for self-care rather than squeezing in a dozen miscellaneous tasks. If she can, she knows it will be good for herself and for her third-graders. Just as it was this year. “I was in a lighter mood, we had more fun together. And I know my students got more out of our content,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-58398\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/jennifer_dao-e1630309274176-160x301.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"301\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/jennifer_dao-e1630309274176-160x301.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/jennifer_dao-e1630309274176.png 560w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">Jennifer Dao\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Algebra teacher, Nichols Middle School\u003cbr>\nEvanston, Illinois\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tapping into technology\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I used to think I was a pretty tech savvy teacher, but remote learning has taught me to tap more into my tech skills and use them to be more intentional with my students.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jennifer Dao’s mathematics teaching style has always been pretty open-ended. There’s a lesson plan and a learning goal, of course, but after presenting a problem, she follows her students’ lead. “Whatever the kids do, I use it throughout the lesson to summarize and to piece together their work,” she explained.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Without students in the same room as her until February, Dao decided to implement a new structure this year. Along with some colleagues, she adopted a practice called \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.geniconsulting.org/chapter-6#learning-contracts-the-structure-of-self-directedness\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">learning contracts\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> from \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.geniconsulting.org/bio\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Larry Geni\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a retired science teacher. Using this model, Dao started each class with a slide containing information and links to everything that would be covered that day. The class spent the first 40 minutes on a warm-up and the main lesson. For the second half of class, students chose a task from three options to work on independently or with \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54986/how-black-girls-benefit-when-math-has-social-interaction-and-ways-to-learn-together\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">small groups\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One task might be watching a review video on a foundational skill or completing guided notes with teacher support. There are also advanced practice exercises for the day’s topic and advanced challenges related to the standard. Dao said these options helped her organize class more clearly, and it showed her that students benefit from visual and written instructions, in addition to the oral ones she gives in-person. “I used to think I was a pretty tech savvy teacher, but remote learning has taught me to tap more into my tech skills and use them to be more intentional with my students,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Choosing between tasks also improved students’ \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53524/how-revising-math-exams-turns-students-into-learners-not-processors\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">metacognitive skills\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by requiring them to take stock of their understanding. Students were “brutally honest” about themselves in weekly self-evaluations and optional blog posts, Dao said. Since she couldn’t \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54504/three-simple-tech-tools-to-make-math-thinking-visible\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">see students’ independent work\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> on paper, reading their self-reflections encouraged her. “It made me feel like the work that I put in wasn't for nothing, because a lot of teachers felt that frustration on Zoom, seeing just squares on a page. … It gave me a better snapshot of the kids.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cimg class=\"alignleft wp-image-58397 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lauren_merkley-e1630309436791-160x240.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lauren_merkley-e1630309436791-160x240.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2021/08/lauren_merkley-e1630309436791.jpeg 645w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">Lauren Merkley\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>English teacher, Cottonwood High School\u003cbr>\nMurray, Utah\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A “both/and” year\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I must have said, ‘I can't do this’ 1,000 times this school year … But every time — every time! — I could do it. I could keep going.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For Lauren Merkley, the 2020-21 school year started with a sense of foreboding. Her school began with both in-person and asynchronous virtual options. That meant she had to build an online class while also preparing for socially distanced traditional instruction. At the same time, ambient anxiety about possible closures loomed large. The school went fully remote twice in the fall because of surging COVID-19 numbers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“First quarter was brutal,” Merkley said. In her virtual classes, there were dozens of students she never saw or heard from. “They were ghosts,” she said. And that meant failing more students than ever before. It was all so much. “I must have said, ‘I can't do this’ 1,000 times this school year,” Merkley recalled. “But every morning my heart was beating, and I found that I could do it. Whatever ‘it’ was that day.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The seeming impossibility of so many tasks forced Merkley, who in 2020 was the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.deseret.com/utah/2019/9/6/20851964/utahs-teacher-of-the-year-2020-lauren-merkley\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Utah Teacher of the Year\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, to accept \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56650/were-all-new-this-year-how-advice-for-rookie-teachers-can-help-everyone-during-virtual-learning\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">imperfection in her teaching\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. She told students that she was learning alongside them and asked for their feedback. Though uncertainty persisted, things did improve after the first quarter. And like flowers pushing through cracks in concrete, some wonderful moments blossomed, too. Like when her students read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In FlipGrid video responses and comments, the high schoolers drew connections between King’s rhetoric and contemporary questions about police violence and the Black Lives Matter movement. The discussion had the highest engagement of any activity in Merkley’s virtual classes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While not every lesson sparked that kind of response, Merkley said that the pandemic and the politics of the past year catalyzed students to look beyond their usual rhythm of school or work or soccer practice. They \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56141/im-willing-to-fight-for-america-5-student-activists-on-protesting-for-change\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">made connections\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> between their lives and larger systems. “It's a both/and,” Merkley said. “It was (a year that we survived). But there were also moments where my kids felt so alive, where they felt so relevant, where what we were doing felt like it mattered.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For some teachers, the pandemic has tipped the scale from a stressful job to an untenable one, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/24/1-in-4-teachers-are-considering-quitting-after-this-past-year.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">prompting them to walk away\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Merkley, however, said this year reaffirmed her place in the profession. The successes may have been fewer, but they were hard won. “You're in it to help kids and to have those moments of discovery,” she said. “So when they came this year, I think they were all the sweeter because of that juxtaposition.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"order": 9
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"order": 18
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"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
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"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"source": "American Public Media"
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"masters-of-scale": {
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"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
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"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"meta": {
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"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
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"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
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},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
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"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
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"planet-money": {
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"
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},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0c2d153-ad36-4c8d-901d-f1da6a724824/political-breakdown",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
"meta": {
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
"subscribe": {
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
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